Between 2009 and 2013 Cymene Howe and Dominic Boyer conducted fieldwork in Mexico's Isthmus of Tehuantepec to examine the political, social, and ecological dimensions of moving from fossil fuels to wind power. Their work manifested itself as a new ethnographic form: the duograph-a combination of two single-authored books that draw on shared fieldsites, archives, and encounters that can be productively read together, yet can also stand alone in their analytic ambitions.

In his volume, Energopolitics, Boyer examines the politics of wind power and how it is shaped by myriad factors, from the legacies of settler colonialism and indigenous resistance to state bureaucracy and corporate investment. Drawing on interviews with activists, campesinos, engineers, bureaucrats, politicians, and bankers, Boyer outlines the fundamental impact of energy and fuel on political power. Boyer also demonstrates how large conceptual frameworks cannot adequately explain the fraught and uniquely complicated conditions on the isthmus, illustrating the need to resist narratives of anthropocenic universalism and to attend to local particularities.

About the Author
Dominic Boyer is Professor of Anthropology at Rice University, Founding Director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Research in the Human Sciences (CENHS), and author of The Life Informatic: Newsmaking in the Digital Era. Energopolitics is one half of the duograph Wind and Power in the Anthropocene; Ecologics, by Cymene Howe, is the other half.

Reviews
"Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty; professionals." -- L. L. Johnson * Choice *
"Howe and Boyer look back on the past with fresh eyes. . . . Howe and Boyer's project has many virtues. For one, it articulates the perils of corporate wind economies. For another, it positions Indigenous communities (like the Zapotec) not as outmoded objects for anthropological inquiry, but (a la Gayatri Spivak) as 'active [producers] of culture.' Most importantly, perhaps, is how Wind and Power in the Anthropocene documents alternatives to corporate wind ventures like Marena. The book highlights, for example, community-based initiatives that also seek to harness the awesome power of istmeno wind-projects that promote communal welfare and environmental justice." -- Stacey Balkan * Public Books *
"The duograph is an interesting and novel way to approach collaborative writing, which I enjoyed engaging with. . . . Energopolitics elegantly brings together political theory and ethnography. -- Anna G. Sveinsdottir * Journal of Latin American Geography *

"In Wind and Power in the Anthropocene, a two-volume 'duograph,' Cymene Howe, in Ecologics, and Dominic Boyer, in Energopolitics, explore the development of wind parks during the early twenty-first century on the isthmus of Tehuantepec.... One of the most refreshing components of their collaborative and individual writing is the clarity of their position as researchers in this project as they circulated among politicians, indigenous peoples, and corporate officials. It is a necessary exercise, as they argue, for appreciating the entrenchment of the wind in local political and social relations."

-- Nathan Kapoor * Technology and Culture *
"Boyer's book seeks ways around human-centered notions of politics.... More important than his theoretical discussion is his contention that in order to understand aeolian politics in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, one must attend to situated, historical processes with which transitions to renewable energy become intimately entangled." -- Chakad Ojani * Anthropology Book Forum *
"[Ecologics and Energopolitics] make strong arguments on political processes in the field of wind energy in Mexico...[and] are important contributions to an anthropology of energy, a still growing field within the discipline."




-- Oliver D. Liebig * Anthropos *



Book Information
ISBN 9781478003779
Author Dominic Boyer
Format Paperback
Page Count 280
Imprint Duke University Press
Publisher Duke University Press
Weight(grams) 408g