[Culture_aglist] FW: call for papers - Nov 07 AAAs

[Lois Stanford]

  _____  

From: Society for Economic Anthropology [mailto:SEA-L at listserv.albany.edu]
On Behalf Of Tom Love
Sent: Sunday, January 14, 2007 5:38 PM
To: SEA-L at listserv.albany.edu
Subject: call for papers - Nov 07 AAAs

 

After Cheap Energy:  Anthropological Perspectives on the Human Condition

in the Wake of Fossil-Fueled Globalization

 

Panel Proposal

American Anthropological Assn.

Annual Meetings Nov. 29th - Dec. 2nd 2007

Washington, DC

 

"Anthropology is perennially concerned with the causes and consequences of
human resource transitions. Topics such as the origins of agriculture or the
organization of irrigation will always be timely. Today, when energy is
again on the public agenda, it is important to anticipate the nature of
post-fossil-fuel economies and societies as well as the transition to such
systems."  (Tainter, J. A., T. F. H. Allen, A. Little, and T. W. Hoekstra.
2003. Resource transitions and energy gain: contexts of organization.
Conservation Ecology 7(3): 4. [online] URL:
http://www.consecol.org/vol7/iss3/art4/)

 

>From the fight of the Ogoni people in the Niger River delta to slumdwellers
in Kingston, Jamaica, from suburbanites in industrial North America to
aspiring middle class Chinese and Indians, people around the world are ever
more dependent on and affected by the economic growth flowing from cheap
energy.  Yet a growing number of petroleum geologists, investment bankers
and others now think that humanity is at or nearing the peak of the oil age,
with supplies of the non-renewable fossil fuels powering global civilization
declining in the months and years to come.  It appears humanity may be
leaving an anomalous period of cheap energy, to which many have grown
accustomed, and entering, or reentering, a period of energy scarcity.  Some
argue that there appears to be no known combination of alternative fuels
which can be scaled up soon enough to bridge a coming energy gap, and that
humanity faces dieoff as we revert to agrarian conditions like those that
preceded the modern era.  Others are more confident in technological
possibilities, the responsiveness of markets, however flawed, and the
inherent ingenuity of human beings when faced with extraordinary challenges.
In either case, the social and cultural implications of virtually any
imaginable energy scenario facing humanity are potentially staggering.
People around the world seem increasingly aware of how the non-renewable
nature of oil and other fossil-fuels are affecting them and the
possibilities for economic growth, and some governments are taking policy
steps informed by this awareness. 

 

With our robust four-field, stereoscopic macro-micro and
historically-oriented focus on the human condition, what can anthropologists
contribute both to understanding the nature of and helping people cope with
fossil fuel-related converging crises of the 21st century?  Leslie White
brought anthropological attention to the consequences of increasing energy
use for human cultural evolution; almost sixty years later, with a
dramatically larger human population and the apparent peaking of
fossil-fueled globalization now sweeping the planet, what can we say about
the consequences for humanity of possible energy scarcity?  How is this
stage of human history both similar to and different from previous times of
crisis and collapse?  Many of the peoples with whom anthropologists work are
already on the margins of the high energy society, whether through poverty
or isolation.  People still on solar economies may well sustain in ways now
thought doomed.  How do peoples' positions and dispositions in relation to
the cheap energy system affect how they experience these processes, and how
do these both reflect and channel the forces of change?  What inequalities
might be exacerbated with energy scarcity, and which ameliorated?  Since
energy stresses may first appear as economic problems in market economies,
what can economic anthropologists contribute to understanding how a liquid
fuels crisis may play out?  A staple of anthropological discourse over
recent decades is how much industrial peoples can learn from people in the
small scale societies we typically study; but to what extent can people in
industrial societies incorporate cultural elements, adaptive strategies and
insights from pre-industrial peoples to adapt to a post-industrial world?
In the face of growing energy constraints and inequalities on the ground,
how are widespread or recurrent narratives of national progress, utopias or
dystopias formulated and experienced in the everyday lives of ordinary
people?  How are anthropological concepts, theories and practices themselves
related to the growth of high energy modernity, and how might they be
challenged by coming energy scarcity?

 

Topics and perspectives could range from the theoretical to the
ethnographic, but papers which show how such energy-related large-scale
forces play out on the ground in the everyday lives of ordinary people will
be most favored for inclusion.

 

Contact:  Thomas Love

               Professor of Anthropology

               Linfield College

               McMinnville, OR  97128

               tlove at linfield.edu

               503-883-2504