Resource-making controversies: Knowledge, anticipatory politics and economization of unconventional fossil fuels

Kama, Kärg

doi:10.1177/0309132519829223

Cited by 57 publications

(29 citation statements)

References 113 publications

(204 reference statements)

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“…Scholars studying the industries of oil, gas, agriculture, and other ecologically intensive sectors have written a host of inspiring analyses concerning the geographies of extraction. This work has examined the modes of exploitation and social relations surrounding the removal, production, and distribution of resources, as well as resistance against these activities enacted by communities both near and at a distance from extractive sites (Ahlers and Zwarteveen, 2009;Anthias, 2018;Bebbington et al, 2013;Bridge, 2009;Curley, 2020;Eaton and Kinchy, 2016;Himley, 2013;Huber, 2013;Kama, 2019;Kenney-Lazar, 2012;Lu et al, 2016;Mingorr ıa, 2018;Valdivia, 2008). While such scholarship, including that by the authors included in this collection, has provided crucial analyses concerning the extraction and exportation of nature by state and non-state actors, this section is animated by the view that as researchers we must constantly reflect upon the fieldwork we undertake concerning contentious industrial processes (and the sites in which these processes occur).…”

Section: Introduction To Special Sectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extraction, entanglements, and (im)materialities: Reflections on the methods and methodologies of natural resource industries fieldwork

Zalik

Mollett

Sultana

et al. 2020

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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This multi-authored collection of papers examines the complex realities of research on natural resource industries, including the messy entanglements of extraction, materiality, and everyday social life this research entails. Of central importance to the contributors is how scholars confront fieldwork challenges ethically, methodologically, and corporeally. The collection has two key objectives. First, it expands our understanding of extractive industry by bringing together work on resources conventionally understood as extractive (e.g. oil and minerals) alongside resource-intensive industries not typically examined through an extractive lens, for instance fisheries, agricultural monocultures, water, and tourism. As such, it considers the historical and current conditions that facilitate the extraction of resources in parallel, cyclical, and reproducing forms. Second, the collection examines scholarly positionalities, methodologies, and dilemmas that arise when studying nature-intensive industries, including the extractive dimensions associated with social research itself. Together, the pieces argue that research concerning extractive industries entails multiple scholarly positions—positions problematically inflected with colonialism and always shaped by power relations. Contributors to the section draw largely from feminist, postcolonial, anti-racist, and historical materialist insights to frame and problematize the corporeal and representational concerns arising from their scholarship on nature-intensive industries, including personal dilemmas that they have encountered in their work. Overall, the collection is driven by the realization that research, and the analyses it entails, may serve as a tool for emancipatory intervention yet also reproduce inequality. The futures of the people and ecosystems at the center of our studies impel constant reflection so that our work, and that of the next generation of scholars, may offer critical analysis that contributes to transforming—rather than reinforcing—oppressive relations associated with extractive sectors and industries.

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Section: Introduction To Special Sectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extraction, entanglements, and (im)materialities: Reflections on the methods and methodologies of natural resource industries fieldwork

Zalik

Mollett

Sultana

et al. 2020

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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“…Hesse's (2019) work on the geographies of uncertainty within unconventional energy occupational health regulation,Baka, Hesse, Weinthal, and Bakker's (2019) research on the construction of scientific expertise within US unconventional energy regulation andKama's (2016Kama's ( , 2019 work on the linkages between knowledge production and resource making. As evidence of the cross-cutting scope of energy geographies, Behrsin's (2019) work integrates both STS and Marxist political economy in order to critique the scientific knowledge enabling renewable energy transitions.While this scholarship helps to establish a foundation for intersections between energy geographies and STS, additional avenues can be explored.…”

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confidence: 99%

The evolving borderland of energy geographies

Baka

Vaishnava

2020

Geography Compass

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Energy geographers have characterized energy as a borderland topic because of its ability to straddle and interconnect different geographic concepts and debates. In this review, we evaluate how the borderland of energy geographies has been emerging in recent years by analyzing scholarship on energy published in top geography journals and a leading energy studies journal, Energy Research & Social Science. In part 1 of our review, we evaluate how the borderland of energy geographies is evolving by mapping the geographic range of empirical studies, the processes and types of energy systems being researched and the key geographic concepts/theories engaged across the four main sub‐fields of geography. We find that energy geographies scholarship has primarily centered on the Global North, remains focused on the extractive and production phase of energy development and is evolving across and within three of the four sub‐fields of geography. Energy transitions, governance, justice, space, and landscape are key topics and concepts examined. Notable underrepresentations include a relative lack of energy geographies scholarship within physical geography, as well as limited studies that engage geographic concepts to study the transportation sector, unconventional energy development and the food‐energy‐water nexus. In part 2, we identify three broad research themes to expand the frontier of energy geographies: (a) geographies of energy knowledge production, particularly indigenous knowledge; (b) materializing energy, especially through engaging political‐industrial ecology; and (c) advancing geographic thought by critically assessing how studying energy advances/challenges/transforms core geographic concepts and debates. Collectively, our review demonstrates that energy geographies have established firm footing within and across geography. Deepening engagement with emerging trends elsewhere in geography and the social sciences will not only help to better conceptualize what a geographic perspective on energy means but will also help to make clearer sense of the rapid economic, social, environmental, and political transformations currently underway within the global energy system.

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“…Human geography and environmental justice scholarship has rightfully paid specific attention to controversies and opposition movements formed around the siting of risky techno scientific projects whether they concern resource or energy extraction, waste incineration or disposal (e.g. Gullion, 2015; Gusterson, 2000; Kama, 2019; Kirsch, 2014). Yet, actions undertaken by those who are interested in hosting such projects have not received much scholarly attention.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Desire for the ‘worst’: Extending nuclear attachments in southeastern New Mexico

Saraç-Lesavre

2019

Environ Plan D

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In the city of Carlsbad, New Mexico, where a deep geological repository named the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant receives regular shipments of military transuranic waste that will remain radioactive for 10,000 years, a group of local actors has been putting major efforts to extend their attachments to nuclear waste futures. In January 2012, Forbes magazine named Carlsbad ‘The Town that Wants America’s Worst Atomic Waste’. Obviously, linking the verb ‘want’ with ‘worst’ is meant to show how unexpected this desire might be. This paper offers an ethnographical account of activities undertaken by their Nuclear Task Force at a peculiar moment. Articulating the relationship between valuation and desiring, it develops the notion of proactive valuation undertakings to refer to local actors’ attempts to generate new attachments and to maintain existing ones through the succession of a series of mediated and equipped valuation undertakings. Rather than approaching desire for waste with scepticism, it follows what ‘desiring’ actors do and how they do it in ‘enterprise form’ and offers a novel, symmetrical and a more comprehensive approach to examine, not only, the co-production of places and techno political orders, but also the constitution of political and moral values at specific sites.

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Resource-making controversies: Knowledge, anticipatory politics and economization of unconventional fossil fuels

Cited by 57 publications

References 113 publications

Extraction, entanglements, and (im)materialities: Reflections on the methods and methodologies of natural resource industries fieldwork

Extraction, entanglements, and (im)materialities: Reflections on the methods and methodologies of natural resource industries fieldwork

The evolving borderland of energy geographies

Desire for the ‘worst’: Extending nuclear attachments in southeastern New Mexico

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