Call for papers: Ethnographies of Energy

Workshop.

Energy is once again at the forefront of the human imagination of potential futures. Fuel, power, action, spirit, aura, and charisma. Each of these energy forms signifies the vitality of life, hinting at their potential to animate latent worlds, and their presence or absence holding endless possibilities to reconfigure the social order. From the quest to harness clean energy and reduce fossil fuel dependencies in the Anthropocene to the populist energies redrawing the global political order, and from the ‘animal spirits’ in financial markets to the energetic social mobilizations, the effervescence of energy appears at the heart of twenty-first-century future-making. Common to all forms of energy is its capacity to engender change and reproduction, even acceleration of social life.

In this workshop, we foreground energy as an object of historical-anthropological enquiry to examine its manifold forms – material and immaterial – that animate or disrupt human and planetary life. The idea is to unpack how energy transforms into a political-economic form, and how its abundance or scarcity activates potential for change in the social worlds. We invite a range of themes broadly related to the study of energy across disciplines. These include, but are not limited to, material infrastructures of energy, modes of production and circulation of energy, geopolitical competitions or cooperations to secure energy, energy security, cultures of energy, political charisma, populism, and new political mobilizations. We especially encourage interdisciplinary explorations of the interactions between multiple forms of energies which underpin the exceptional and everyday life in the ongoing political-economic shifts.

The workshop aims to bring early career scholars – doctoral and postdoctoral candidates – together with established scholars in several disciplines including area studies, anthropology, political science, development studies, geography, history, and economics. The program will feature paper presentations, keynote talks, as well as a roundtable panel discussion with policy experts.

Any further enquiries should be addressed to Professor Ravinder Kaur. 

The workshop is a part of the “Green Futures: Strategic Partnerships in the Anthropocene” funded by the Danish Council of Independent Research (DFF), and co-funded by the UCPH-India Funding Pool, Asian Dynamics Initiative, and the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen.