For over a century, predictions about the future have been dominated by technological fantasies, either with utopian or dystopian outcomes. Driven increasingly by responses to the causes and effects of climate change, popular political future imaginaries span elitist extraplanetary survivalism and back-to-the-land minimalism. Anthropologists have emphasised the social and material forms of technology, and the need to analyse and account for visions of the future and attend to socio-material relations between technologies, humans and other living beings in a shared environment.
FAN explores the anthropological potential for future-oriented methodologies, while EAN generates knowledge on approaches energetic practices of various kinds. This workshop brings these two concerns together, to generate synergies, theoretical trajectories and newly shared research agendas. Where do energy and technology futures intersect? How are human futures implicated in diverse techno-energetic visions? What alternative other human futures are possible in the current techno-energetic world than those extremes delineated above of extraplanetary survivalism and back-to-the-land minimalism? How can anthropologists account for- and intervene- and take part in forging in futures-generation?
The aim is to demonstrate that two relatively new areas of anthropological research and practice can work together to consolidate an agenda for research and intervention. It seeks to both impact on the theory and methodology of the discipline and to advance an anthropological approach to energy futures in an interdisciplinary research field.
FAN and EAN are networks of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA)
Future Anthropologies Network (FAN)
Future Anthropologies Network (FAN) is being established as an outcome of the work of the Anthropology at the Edge of the Future Lab held at the 2014 EASA conference. The intention of the group is to continue our shared work in conceptualizing, debating, theorizing and practicing an engaged anthropology that puts futures at the centre of its agenda. One of the key outcomes of our lab was to produce a manifesto, which captured and synthesised the feeling that we collectively took away from the lab. This document will form the basis of our work, and the point from which we will develop as a network.
Objectives
- To create and advance a responsible and engaged anthropological approach to futures, through scholarship, research and practice.
- To establish anthropology as a discipline that is a key participant in contemporary debates and practical developments in discussing and making futures
- To enable early career scholars to see anthropological future-making as a possible career route
See more on: https://futureanthropologies.net/
Energy Anthropology Network (EAN)
Around the world, anthropologists are asking how energy is generated and used, how energy is conceptualised, the role of energy in shaping and articulating states and societies, and diverse relationships characterised as markets, households, families, companies and corporations. Ethnographic work is accumulating on energy concepts and effects such as energy justice and energy ethics, in relation to resource exploitation, distribution, sharing and exchange, in relation to development ideologies, socio-economic regimes, political trajectories, and so forth, with a strong element of comparative empirical research. Anthropologies of energy are highlighting connections between different forms of energy, energy transformations, how energy practices are embedded in diverse everyday contexts from the domestic to systems of domination, as well as questioning the potential for energy crises at different scales. More than ever anthropologists need to question the indivisibility of socio-technological systems and analyse how energetic networks underpin economic, political and social relations at different scales.
As the theme of energy emerges increasingly strongly in anthropological research, an organised approach to comparative and collaborative research is timely, as anthropologists bring critical insight based on ethnographic research. EASA EAN will be a forum for such creative and collaborative discussions.
Objectives:
- To bring together social scientists and practitioners with common interest on energy
- To make energy issues more visible
- To propose alternative understandings of energy systems.
- To support independent and critical studies on energy choices.
- To spark public debate, encourage community outreach and feed research agendas
See more on: https://ean.hypotheses.org/
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