Defining Energy Justice: The Political Ecology of Energy Development in Native America
Lecturer：Dana E. Powell, Ph. D. in Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Research interests include Cultural anthropology; socio-cultural dimensions of energy development; political ecology and environmental justice; politics of knowledge and expertise; identity and indigeneity; feminism and gender; science, technology and society; social movements; ethnographic methodology and engaged scholarship.
Interpreter: Eric Karchmer, Ph. D. in Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In recent years, the ownership and development of natural resources has become a defining factor for indigenous politics and indigenous identity in national environmental movement. In the United States and much of North America, many Native American peoples reside on land reserves which, while economically and politically marginalized, contain vast energy minerals and other renewable power resources. On the one hand the Native Americans have been relocated their places over the course of the 19 centuries. In the past the lands were considered frontiers, barren and empty and nobody cared about them. In the early 20 century, many development companies and energy companies sent prospectors into these lands and discovered these lands are very rich, with energy resources. So the question is who develops, who decides, who owns and who regulates. To the author, it is not only a problem of policy and economy. It’s a problem of anthropology. Because there are people who identify as historically distinct, within these places which are now the most desirable places for transnational energy companies to come and to develop. We have to think about what this means for people’s lives in the future.
Drawing upon a decade of her work with national indigenous environmental justice groups and two years of ethnographic fieldwork on the Navajo Nation in the American Southwest, Dr. Powell discussed how many Native American Nations in the United States are responding to legacies of extractive industry on their tribal homelands. She illustrated how the notion of "energy justice" has emerged through the work of social movements, energy entrepreneurs, and tribal governments, transforming the way that indigenous groups are approaching urgent questions of development, environment, and identity.The focus of her is on how the longstanding fossil fuel-based energy technologies, as well as the emerging renewable technology are reshaping people’s perception of environment, people’s perception of themselves and people’s understanding of energy justice. Energy justice is a term that is emerged in the last decade. It is widespread in inter tribes. In most cases the governments want to make a shift away from coal and fossil fuel-based economies to solar and renewable-based economies. However the Native Americans have a critical historical consciousness and critical sense of the history of the United States. Powell argues that the history of colonization has in many cases played out through science and technology as well as infrastructure. The indigenous people and indigenous land have been recolonialized through development projects. The three different players, the US government, tribe government and the NGOs, All of them have their definition of justice and different ways of approaching development projects. From her point of view, it’s a movement as well as a kind of critique. In the presentation, Powell introduced a resistance to Desert Rock Energy Project. As a proposed and therefore emergent object of collective concern, it is productive, forming and transforming broader, public debates over. She argues that Desert Rock shapes these conversations, identities and politics, as a present absence – regardless of whether or not it is ever built.In addition to this overview of energy politics in Native America, Powell also shared some of her methodological lessons from experiments in collaborative and engaged ethnography during her research, suggesting ways in which anthropology might intervene in "crowded fields" of research and action, such as energy development debates.
“人类学沙龙”第7期
ana E. Powell谈定义能源正义(摘要)
作者：卜玉梅 转贴自： 中国社会文化人类学网
题目：定义能源正义：美洲原住民地区能源开发的政治生态学
时间：2011年3月8日(周二)下午1:00
地点：中国社会科学院社会学研究所1077室
翻译：Eric Karchmer(美国北卡罗来纳大学【Chapel Hill】人类学博士)
主讲人简介
ana E. Powell，美国北卡罗来纳大学【Chapel Hill】人类学博士，
研究兴趣包括文化人类学，能源开发的社会文化维度，政治生态学和环境正义，原住民身份认同，女权与性别，社会运动，民族志方法与参与式学术。
内容简介：鲍威尔博士将探讨在今日美国，有多少美洲土著民族对遗留在他们家园的能源开发的烂摊子做出自己的反应。基于十年来与土著环境正义团体的共事，以及在美国西南部纳瓦霍人(Navajo)中间长达两年的民族志田野研究，鲍威尔博士将诠释，在社会运动、能源公司、部落政治体的共同运作过程中，“能源正义”概念是如何产生，并改变原住民群体处理发展、环境和身份认同这些迫切问题的方式的。除了概述美国原住民的能源政治以外，鲍威尔还将分享她在研究过程中所进行的“协作与参与式民族志(collaborative and engaged ethnography)”实验及其方法论。这种民族志表明，对于已经被密集研究、社会行动大量卷入的领域，如关于能源开发的争论之类，人类学也可能产生出自己的介入方式。
(摘要整理人:卜玉梅,中国社会科学院研究生院人类学博士研究生)
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本帖最后由 代启福 于 2012-10-17 09:08 编辑 ]
