January 23: Renewable Energy Sources as Socio-technical Project

What?

More and more countries, regions, communities and companies worldwide are looking for alternative methods of power generation, other than based on fossil fuels. Power generation tends to be associated with natural sciences and engineering, which directly contribute to the development of new technologies, however, it also has very important social aspects, such as the political and social organization of making energy infrastructures, of gaining access to different fuels, the meaning of these practices and technologies for communities, nations, companies and for relations of power, which are either reproduced or subverted when energy is produced in a new way. These social aspects of energy production and consumption occupy such disciplines as anthropology and social studies of science and technology (STS). Thus, the aim of the project is to develop a theoretical and a methodological approach to social studies of (1) how new socio-technical infrastructures for electric energy production and consumption are made by actors differently positioned towards markets and state institutions, (2) what the meaning of electric energy is for different actors involved in the making of these infrastructures and how it may change (3) how these new infrastructures are positioned towards markets and states in terms of power relations and various types of dependencies. During the lecture, doctor Aleksandra Lis will present research plan for her fieldwork in Argentina. She will outline the main research questions and theoretical perspectives and present a potential locality for ethnographic research.