AAA CFP: Globalized energy futures?

CFP for AAA 2013: "Globalized energy futures? Local energy practices and
global trends in critical perspective."

The need for abundant energy supplies ties societies into a global
kaleidoscope of markets, cooperation, discord and intrigue. Established
channels of energy production, distribution and consumption are mainly
reliant on oil, gas, coal and nuclear energy. The shale revolution in the
US and elsewhere has put paid to the notion of peak oil, even while the
'greening' of energy production and consumption has risen as a new
imperative and market opportunity. Local and national practices of energy
producers and consumers are simultaneously dependent upon local contexts
and also tightly integrated into global energy markets and the strategic
positioning of multinational companies. The future of the Canadian oil
sands and Gulf governments alike are vulnerable to peaks and troughs in
energy markets. The impending US shale oil and gas boom could put a dent in
state revenues elsewhere in the world, forcing changes in global markets
and local practices alike. While grounded in ethnographic research of
particular contexts, the emergent anthropology of energy needs to engage
this larger canvas of global and interconnected social forces.

This panel examines local practices and global trends in the production,
distribution and consumption of energy. It asks the question: what is in
the idea of globalized energy futures? How can ethnographic,
anthropological and interdisciplinary studies of particular energy regimes
and their outcomes contribute to our understanding of the global
connections, junctions and disjunctions engendered by our common need for
energy? The objects of study in this panel may range from political
economies to multinational companies to local energy producers and
consumers. Papers may discuss corporate and governmental strategy and
action, challenges to these strategies and actions, changes to economies of
energy, impacts of innovative technologies on existing energy regimes, and
social outcomes of changes in energy production, distribution and/or
consumption. We welcome papers that combine ethnographic analysis of these
or other related themes with a view to global connections of actors, ideas
and objects.

Please send abstracts of 250 words or less, along with your contact
information (name, institutional affiliation, department, and email
address) to Timm Lau (King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals) at
tlau@kfupm.edu.sa or Caura Wood (York University) at caura.wood@gmail.com,
by 13 April 2013. Accepted panelists will need to register for AAA
membership and the 2013 conference by the panel submission deadline of 15
April 2013.