Energy

Cymene Howe

Chapter 4 in Elgar Encyclopedia of Economic Anthropology, 2025, pp 24-28 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This entry describes how anthropology has treated energy as a physical and environmental condition as well as a cultural and economic phenomenon. Early work in the anthropology of energy was “intermittent,” with surges of research followed by times of remission that were then rekindled with new priorities, concepts, and commitments. In contemporary debates, anthropologists focus on the technologies surrounding energy production and use, from fossil fuels to renewable resources; anthropologists consider how energy fits into larger economic and political systems and they study how extraction, exploitation, and the imperial legacies of energy production must be interrogated. The chapter illustrates, overall, that by marrying the material with the semiotic, the physical with the metaphysical, and the empirical with the interpretive, the anthropology of energy has much to teach us about energy justice and economic priorities as well as the future of energy in local and global contexts.

Keywords: Energy; Economics; Ecologics; Justice; Climate; Petrocapitalism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035312566
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