Contested Powers: Towards a Political Anthropology of Energy in Latin America

Energy is essential for national development, but there is no easy correlation between production capacity and social well-being. As our project's results demonstrate, the development outcomes of energy resources in Latin America, both renewable and non-renewable, are as dependent on social and political forces as they are on technological and economic opportunities. Energy policies play a major role in current political processes in Latin America, and are widely recognized as the catalysts responsible for many current political and civil confrontations in the region. These include contests over the distribution of benefits from oil and gas extraction, and the role of the state and market in responding to diverse collective interests including the specific rights of indigenous peoples and workers. At the outset of our project we realized that communities, social movements, governments and international organizations wield highly contrasting assumptions about the significance of energy and natural resources. In Latin America, as elsewhere, intense political debates surround their social and environmental benefits and costs, as well as the terms used to manage them as sources of energy- hence the title of our project. Media coverage, civil society organizations and academic writing all reveal the manner in which these overlapping and contested interests result in confrontations of varying degrees, some democratic and militant, others violent. However, despite widespread recognition of the clashes that energy choices and extraction practices cause, until very recently there has been little effort to qualitatively study their contextual expression, the various interests of the actors involved, or indeed how these differences play out in struggles that connect local and global politics. It is to the lack of detailed empirical knowledge about the internal dynamics of these energy conflicts that this project has responded. Recognizing the significant lack of socially oriented research on energy politics in the region we set out on the basis of a series of in-depth case studies to explore how ideas of energy are discursively formed, and concretely impact on Latin American politics and society. As outlined in our initial application to the Norwegian research council we have furthermore studied whether the improved qualitative understanding provided by our research has potential for reducing social and political tensions at different levels within the region. Whilst our research results provide no simple answers regarding the potential of our research for the resolution of tensions, our research and application of a common methodological andconceptual framework demonstrate the following conclusions: Contextual study of political power and energy choice, extraction, and management reveals the internal dynamics and possible governance alternatives of current conflicts in Latin America. There is no direct causality between expanded energy production and development. The linkage between energy and development is highly dependent on the political dynamics in which policy is democratically determined. Qualitative study of the ideas, language and values as well as material claims attached to energy resources demonstrates the importance of an expanded notion of sovereignty to resource and energy governance. Our anthropologically inspired extended case study approach, with its resulting emphasis on resource sovereignty, indicates a fundamental critique of the rational-actor assumptions of current dominant approaches to studying resource governance on the continent. Recognition of the socio-economics of energy choices, are all the more pertinent when we consider the consumption choices linked to the transition from fossil to renewable fuels.

Energy issues have assumed a key role in political processes in Latin America. These issues include contests over the distribution of benefits from oil and gas extraction and the role of the state in adequately representing the collective interest of nati onal populations including the specific rights of indigenous peoples and workers. Such foundational issues of popular national sovereignty overlap with global environmental concerns about energy production. It is therefore vital to have a thorough underst anding of the issues, meanings, and how these differences play out in struggles that connect local and global politics. Communities, social movements, governments and international organisations can all be seen to be wielding highly contrasting assumption s about the significance of natural resources and the terms used to manage them as sources of energy. A reflexive understanding of how discourses of energy come to be articulated in Latin American politics and society is therefore needed. This project ai ms to provide such an understanding through a broad and ambitious research program covering six Latin American countries. We aim here to not only study the operation of energy policy, but the formation of energy as a set of ideas and social dynamics that at once inform and are formed by the anthropology and politics of the region. Through the further combination of social science methodologies with digital photography we furthermore argue that the profile of this understanding can be given stronger portra yal and depth. As such the proposed project poses the following key research questions: How is energy conceived and understood by different sectors of Latin American politics and society? How do these conceptions influence or relate to debates and confl icts over energy resources at the level of the nation and region? What potential does the recognition of energy as a set of ideas and basis for dialogue have for conflict resolution in the region?