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7 books match the query 'Energy development'

cover of Ecologics: Wind and Power in the Anthropocene

Ecologics

Wind and Power in the Anthropocene

Cymene Howe

Duke University Press, 2019

Between 2009 and 2013 Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer conducted fieldwork in Mexico's Isthmus of Tehuantepec to examine the political, social, and ecological dimensions of moving from fossil fuels to wind power. Their work manifested itself as a new ethnographic form: the duograph—a combination of two single-authored books that draw on shared fieldsites, archives, and encounters that can be productively read together, yet can also stand alone in their analytic ambitions.

In her volume, Ecologics, Howe narrates how an antidote to the Anthropocene became both failure and success. Tracking the development of what would have been Latin America's largest wind park, Howe documents indigenous people's resistance to the project and the political and corporate climate that derailed its renewable energy potential. Using feminist and more-than-human theories, Howe demonstrates how the dynamics of energy and environment cannot be captured without understanding how human aspirations for energy articulate with nonhuman beings, technomaterial objects, and the geophysical forces that are at the heart of wind and power.
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cover of Energopolitics: Wind and Power in the Anthropocene

Energopolitics

Wind and Power in the Anthropocene

Dominic Boyer

Duke University Press, 2019

Between 2009 and 2013 Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer conducted fieldwork in Mexico's Isthmus of Tehuantepec to examine the political, social, and ecological dimensions of moving from fossil fuels to wind power. Their work manifested itself as a new ethnographic form: the duograph—a combination of two single-authored books that draw on shared fieldsites, archives, and encounters that can be productively read together, yet can also stand alone in their analytic ambitions.

In his volume, Energopolitics, Boyer examines the politics of wind power and how it is shaped by myriad factors, from the legacies of settler colonialism and indigenous resistance to state bureaucracy and corporate investment. Drawing on interviews with activists, campesinos, engineers, bureaucrats, politicians, and bankers, Boyer outlines the fundamental impact of energy and fuel on political power. Boyer also demonstrates how large conceptual frameworks cannot adequately explain the fraught and uniquely complicated conditions on the isthmus, illustrating the need to resist narratives of anthropocenic universalism and to attend to local particularities.
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cover of Energy Impacts: A Multidisciplinary Exploration of North American Energy Development

Energy Impacts

A Multidisciplinary Exploration of North American Energy Development

Jeffrey B. Jacquet

University Press of Colorado, 2020

Development of various energy sources continues across North America and around the world, raising questions about social and economic consequences for the places and communities where these activities occur. Energy Impacts brings together important new research on site-level social, economic, and behavioral impacts from large-scale energy development. Featuring conceptual and empirical multidisciplinary research from leading social scientists, the volume collects a broad range of perspectives to understand North America’s current energy uses and future energy needs.
 
Twelve chapters from respected scholars in a variety of disciplines present new ways to consider and analyze energy impact research. Focused on varied energy topics, geographies, and disciplines, each chapter includes a policy brief that summarizes the work and provides “key takeaways” to apply the findings to policy and public discourse.
Meaningful public engagement is critical in limiting the negative implications of energy development, and understanding the social influences on and of energy systems is a cornerstone of addressing the climate crisis. As such, Energy Impacts is a significant work for students, scholars, and professionals working in sociology, education, geography, environmental studies, and public health.
This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1528422. Publication is also supported, in part, by Montana State University.
 
Contributors:
Ali Adil, Lisa Bailey-Davis, Nancy Bowen-Elizey, Morey Burnham, Weston Eaton, Heather Feldhaus, Felix Fernando, Emily Grubert, C. Clare Hinrichs, John Hintz, Richard Hirsh, Season Hoard, Tamara Laninga, Eric Larson, Achla Marathe, Natalie Martinkus, Seven Mattes, Ronald Meyers, Patrick Miller, Ethan Minier, Myra Moss, Jacob Mowery, Thomas Murphy, Sevda Ozturk Sari, John Parkins, Christopher Podeschi, Nathan Ratledge, Sanne Rijkhoff, Kelli Roemer, Todd Schenk, Anju Seth, Kate Sherren, Jisoo Sim, Marc Stern, Jessica Ulrich-Schad, Cameron Whitley, Laura Zachary
 
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cover of Landscapes of Power: Politics of Energy in the Navajo Nation

Landscapes of Power

Politics of Energy in the Navajo Nation

Dana E. Powell

Duke University Press, 2018

In Landscapes of Power Dana E. Powell examines the rise and fall of the controversial Desert Rock Power Plant initiative in New Mexico to trace the political conflicts surrounding native sovereignty and contemporary energy development on Navajo (Diné) Nation land. Powell's historical and ethnographic account shows how the coal-fired power plant project's defeat provided the basis for redefining the legacies of colonialism, mineral extraction, and environmentalism. Examining the labor of activists, artists, politicians, elders, technicians, and others, Powell emphasizes the generative potential of Navajo resistance to articulate a vision of autonomy in the face of twenty-first-century colonial conditions. Ultimately, Powell situates local Navajo struggles over energy technology and infrastructure within broader sociocultural life, debates over global climate change, and tribal, federal, and global politics of extraction.
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cover of Our Energy Future

Our Energy Future

Lincoln Davies

University of Utah Press, 2025

One of the greatest challenges of our time is the transition to clean energy. As climate change disrupts natural and human systems, a successful clean energy transition offers hope to a world upended by an overreliance on carbonbased fossil fuels.

In Our Energy Future, Lincoln Davies shines a bright light on the challenges the transition presents, including energy equity, political partisanship, the need for holistic solutions, and adaptability in the face of change. Our Energy Future makes the case for why the United States’ current transition to clean energy provides our world with something we so desperately need today: hope.
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cover of Power Lines: The Human Costs of American Energy in Transition

Power Lines

The Human Costs of American Energy in Transition

Sanya Carley and David Konisky

University of Chicago Press, 2025

On American energy and its persisting power to destroy.

In the United States, the promise of a green-energy future is complicated by its realities. The country’s legacy energy systems are decrepit; the rollout of new technologies is unequal and piecemeal; households find themselves increasingly without reliable or affordable access; and Americans are excluded from the decisions that shape their energy futures. Having power in America has become an exercise in race, class, and wealth—in more ways than one.

Power Lines is a sweeping portrait of American energy in the twenty-first century, rendered in terms of its increasing—and inevitable—human costs. Coal miners in West Virginia lose their livelihoods as energy markets change; historically marginalized households cannot easily access new technologies; children in “sacrifice zones” adjacent to mineral-mining sites suffer health problems and limited resources; and cities and towns are burdened from the production of alternative energies.

Sanya Carley and David Konisky show current challenges and an uncertain future of America’s greatest policy imperative. The result is not only sobering but also essential for planning and pursuing a clean-energy transition that improves on the errors of the past.

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cover of Saharan Winds: Energy Systems and Aeolian Imaginaries in Western Sahara

Saharan Winds

Energy Systems and Aeolian Imaginaries in Western Sahara

Allan, Joanna

West Virginia University Press, 2024

Winner, ASLE-UKI Critical Book Prize, 2025
Finalist, Ecocritical Book Award, 2025, Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE)
Longlisted, Bread and Roses Award for Radical Publishing, 2025

As climate crisis ensues, a transition away from fossil fuels becomes urgent. However, some renewable energy developments are propagating injustices such as landgrabs, colonial dispossession, and environmentally destructive practices. Changing the way we imagine and understand wind will help us ensure a globally just wind energy future. 

Saharan Winds contributes to a fairer energy horizon by illuminating the role of imaginaries--how we understand energy sources such as wind and the meanings we attach to wind--in determining the wider politics, whether oppressive or just, associated with energy systems. This book turns to various cultures and communities across different time periods in one space, Western Sahara, to explore how wind imaginaries affect the development, management, and promotion of windfarms; the distribution of energy that windfarms produce; and, vitally, the type of politics mediated by all these elements combined. Highlighting the wind-fueled oppression of colonial energy systems, the book shows the potential offered by nomadic, Indigenous wind imaginaries for contributing to a fairer energy future.
 
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