Dana Powell, Landscapes of Power: Politics of Energy in the Navajo Nation. Durham: Duke University Press. Excellent ethnographic account of the past and present struggles between coal dependency, colonial extractivism, and Navajo efforts to access energy even as the coal, uranium, and water from their territory is used to (em)power white people elsewhere.
Christopher Jones, Routes of Power: Energy and Modern America. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. A good, deep read into the histories and politics of early energy infrastructures (pipelines, coal trains, dams) and the ways that infrastructural boosters – and exploited labor – play a role in energy transitions. For the history buffs.
Timothy Mitchell, Carbon Democracy, still on the list. Parts are dense but this sets out the terrain of the problem, establishes a clear linkage between oil and war, and sets out the challenge for the future: robust participation and struggle in public debate rather than decisions made by economists, capitalists, and engineers.
Review by Mazen Labban, will help you sort out the main points about the "socio-technical" approach and the question of how coal and oil link to particular expressions of 'carbon democracy' which is not to say that democracy thrives because of coal and oil, quite the contrary...but read on.
Review by Kevin Morrison "Whither the Resource Curse?" (PDF)
How an anthropologist studies what we need to do to change our grid-dependence on fossil fuels. Haven't read it yet, stay tuned. Listen to the interview with Bakke on NPR's Fresh Air.
Miguel Tinker Salas. 2009. The Enduring Legacy: Oil, Culture, and Society in Venezuela.
I'm pretty sure Trump is going to do what he can to interfere in Venezuelan politics, even more than we've been doing for the past 100 years or so, so we might as well try to educate ourselves a bit more about the linkage oil establishes between the US and Venezuela.
FROM OUR READINGS IN YEARS PAST:
Bryan O’Neill. 2011. Combating Mountaintop Removal: New Directions in the Fight Against Big Coal. How do small struggles have an impact against massive natural destruction in the Appalachians? Read this book.
Jeff Biggers' Reckoning at Eagle Creek
Visit: http://www.jeffrbiggers.com/books/reckoning-at-eagle-creek/. For links to video, interviews, and discussion with the author on the book and related topics.
Lisa Breglia, Living With Oil: Promises, Peaks, and Declines on Mexico's Gulf Coast
Excellent insights on the problems of dependency on oil jobs, and the politics of development in a rentier state.
Matt Huber 2013. Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and the Forces of Capital.
Must read critical historical analysis of oil and its interconnections with capitalism in the United States.
Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything
Klein's book website: http://thischangeseverything.org/Watch this video, beautiful lessons for understanding the importance of struggle:
"a key part of social change is to challenge the toxic ideas that disempower people and strip them of their confidence and their belief that change is possible”
“we have to be made to believe we are not good enough the way we are so that we go out and buy shit that we don’t need”
everything good about society today was won by people who focused outwards, not inwards...life is such a precious gift, we have to fight"
Jessica Smith Rolston Mining Coal, Undermining Gender
We thought this book was a little too sympathetic to the coal capitalists, given the destructive impacts of the coal industry, but good insights into gendered politics of labor and coal dependency.
More on history of labor struggle -- the Decker Mine strike in Montana
Need to read this portrait of labor in Gilette, alongside of Smith Rolston: "Disposable workers.."
Limbert,
Mandana. 2010. In the Time of Oil: Piety, Memory, and Social Life in an Omani
Town. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 9780804756273
Scott,
Rebecca R. 2010. Removing Mountains, Extracting Nature and Identity in the
Appalachian Coalfields. Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press. 978-0816666003
