Learning togetherness and caring while the planet burns
Daina Pupkevičiūtė
Applied Anthropology Association Anthropos
Energy commons
Matthew Burke
University of Vermont
Beyond extractivism and the corporate sublime
Jane Patton and Imani Jacqueline Brown
Center for International Environmental Law / University of London
Authoritarian affect and the rise of neo-mercantile government
Majia Nadesan
Arizona State University
Comments 7
Tena koutou katoa, welcome to this panel on the hugely important topic of ‘futures and post-extractive imaginaries’.
Thank you to our presenters, Daina, Matthew, Jane, Imani and Majia for a really wonderful set of video presentations.
One thread that runs through these papers for me surrounds how care is understood as a key concept in designing post-extractive futures. So my opening question to all the presenters is to ask if you could say a bit more about the role that care plays in your work and how you approach and understand care.
Thank you so much for this panel and the opportunity to participate in this excellent conference! I’ll briefly address two ways that I understand care in the context of the commons.
First, in understanding care as an action and process–to care. As with commons, we cannot care once and be relieved of this obligation and responsibility. Caring involves committing, engaging, relating and responding, again and again. I’ve learned to understand commoning in this sense as well, not as a point at which relationships have been resolved and certainly not settled, but rather as learning, sometimes failing, often times defending, and returning with humility. This process of caring I believe is what is involved in learning to be a good ancestor.
Secondly, in understanding caring as sharing, or rather sharing as an urgently necessary expression of caring. In the course of this research on energy commons, I was fortunate to have come across a short piece by Neal Gorenflo (available in Bollier and Helfrich here: http://wealthofthecommons.org/contents) in which Gorenflo realizes that “it becomes clearer every day that our survival depends on increasing our capacity to share.” This capacity to share, and to share what some have taken to be their own as (an) unquestionably settled matter, is indeed the capacity that our present moment calls for if we are to realize a future worth living.
Kia ora, and thanks so much for having me on this panel and in this event!
I see caring as a strategy of countering toxic extractivist mindset. I’ve come to think of caring actions, strategies and practices as a form of non-violent resistance, aimed at dismantling the “normalcy” proposed by the fossil / extraction capitalism. In the contemporary, all bodies (human- and others, such as even bodies of water, maybe?) are treated as a resource for creation and multiplication of capital, and the loss of life is only seen of importance when it translates to a loss of capital. As such, it has become seen as expendable, depletable, unworthy of care or cared for only as long as it is viable (aids in creating and propagating capital) and this approach reflects on not only how human bodies are treated, but also in how nature is seen, meaning it is thought of as a resource and not as a complex system of relationships between myriads of lifeforms, without which, or upon destruction of which, human life on Earth would be impossible.
So caring, to me, is a practice of non-violent resistance against the toxicity of the fossil capital.
Kia ora Majia,
Thanks for a fascinating presentation. I was wondering how your ideas surounding neo-mercantile government and thanatopolitics speaks to other ways of theorising contemporary society through the lenses of data colonialism, platform capitalism, surveillance capitalism and ontopower?
Kia ora Matthew,
Thanks for a really interesting presentation that speaks to really important questions surrounding how communities can manage renewable energy. One question I had about the notion of energy commons was if or how the model of commoning can adress questions surrounding the mineral extraction that is necessary for constructing solar and wind plants?
Thank you, Sy, for your question and facilitation. We absolutely should be concerned with and accountable for the harmful impacts of solar and wind energy, yet these concerns need to be taken in context of the overwhelmingly disastrous experience and effects of fossil fuel extraction and use.
The point I wish to make here is that the transition to renewable energy must not replicate the same patterns, of extraction, of ownership, of relations, of mindsets, that now enable and require fossil energy systems and the commitment to unending growth and accumulation. Such replication undermines the very renewability of solar and wind energy. If the creation of ever-more sacrifice zones, and sacrificial communities, is to cease, then the entire chain of renewable energy systems and technologies demands attention, from mining of rare-earth minerals, to transport and manufacture, site installation, generation and transmission, and decommissioning, repurposing, and materials recovery.
Commoning can help to break these patterns. First, commoning requires a correspondence between local conditions and the rules of use, as well as a sharing of benefits of use. Commoning also means local communities can create and modify the rules of use. And commoning requires active monitoring and auditing of conditions and behaviors on the ground. These shifts alone could go a long way to changing patterns from the extractivist mindset.
One aspect of commoning relevant to solar and wind energy that does need strengthening is the capacity for governance across spaces and scales. Take the issue of rare earth minerals, for example, which concerns not so much absolute scarcity but rather uneven distribution. Because of this pattern of distribution, renewable energy transition depends upon long-distance connections across communities. Commoning has proven especially strong in a local context, but is less proven as a mode of governance across greater distances. What’s needed now, then, is the opening of the “black box” of solar and wind energy, as Dustin Mulvaney describes.
As with any social change, this means organizing, advocating, and holding ourselves accountable. This means it is not sufficient to simply demand a renewable energy future without also demanding that solar and wind be done well. In short, we need more advocates, or in this context, commoners, who see their work and projects as part of a whole system to which they hold themselves to account by linking with and coordinating defense of other commoners. This work has not yet been taken up in a meaningful way for solar and wind, in my view, but we have much knowledge and many tools and practices available now to support this work. Organizing through renewable energy cooperatives, with their commitment to cooperation among cooperatives, provides one tangible and widely available approach. Others approaches that need more attention among renewable energy advocates include public and transparent standards for municipalities, utilities and manufacturers, and recognition and reclamation of traditional land rights.
Kia ora!
Thank you for this wonderful panel on post-extractive futures. I really enjoyed and am fascinated by each of the presentations.
Daina, your presentation has evoked swirling thoughts in me and led me to rethink about our bodily movements in time-space and their implications for post-extractive imaginaries. I will be further deliberating upon living, sharing, caring while the planet is burning, as you put it. The images were very striking too.
Large-scale mapping by Jane and Imani, which views the corporate as sublime, shows us the long way ahead to reach “energy commons” as proposed by Matthew.
And Majina. While I was watching your presentation, I felt like the whole history (from the 1500s up until now) reoccurring, from mercantilism, neoliberal capitalism and its crises, to neo-mercantilism… Thanks so much for such a broad and fresh look in a continuum. It also left me with a further thought on thantapolitics, which is new to me after biopolitics.
Thanks Sy for chairing this panel.