Politics, ecology, and the new anthropology of energy: Exploring the emerging frontiers of hydraulic fracking

Journal of Political Ecology

Volumn 21, Issue 1, 2014, Pages 222-236

  Willow, Anna J ^a   Wylie, Sara ^b  

^a OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b NORTHEASTERN UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

Digital media; Embodiment; Energy; Hydraulic fracturing; Oil field services industry; Shale gas

Indexed keywords

ANTHROPOLOGY; ENERGY RESOURCE; HYDRAULIC FRACTURE; HYDROCARBON EXPLORATION; OIL FIELD; OIL INDUSTRY; OIL PRODUCTION; POLITICS; SHALE;

EID: 84908248397     PISSN: None     EISSN: 10730451     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2458/v21i1.21134     Document Type: Article

References (78)

1. Appel, H. 2011. Futures: oil and the making of modularity in Equatorial Guinea. PhD Dissertation, Department of Anthropology, Stanford University.
2. Anderson, B.J. and G.L. Theodori. 2009. Local leaders' perceptions of energy development in the Barnett Shale. Southern Rural Sociology 24(1): 113-129.
3. Barry, A. 2006. Technological zones. European Journal of Social Theory 9(2): 239-253.
4. Bowker, G.C. 1987. A well ordered reality: aspects of the development of Schlumberger, 1920-39. Social Studies of Science 17(4): 611-655.
5. Bowker, G.C. 1994. Science on the run: information management and industrial geophysics at Schlumberger, 1920-1940. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
6. Boyer, D. 2011. Energopolitics and the anthropology of energy. Anthropology News 52(5): 5-7.
7. Brasier, K.J., M.R. Filteau, D.K. McLaughlin, J. Jaquet, R.C. Stedman, T.W. Kelsey, and S.J. Goetz. 2011. Residents' perceptions of community and environmental impacts from development of natural gas in the Marcellus Shale: a comparison of Pennsylvania and New York Cases. Journal of Rural Social Science 26(1): 32-61.
8. Brown, R.B., S.F. Dorins, and R.S. Krannich. 2005. The boom-bust-recovery cycle: dynamics of change in community satisfaction and social integration in Delta, Utah. Rural Sociology 70(1): 28-49.
9. Button, G. 2010. Disaster culture: knowledge and uncertainty in the wake of human and environmental catastrophe. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press.
10. Cartwright, E. 2013. Eco-risk and the case of fracking. In S. Strauss, S. Rupp, and T. Love (eds.) Cultures of energy: power, practices, technologies. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Pp201-212.
11. Casselman, B. 2008. Corporate news: oil-field services firms prosper on drilling boom. Wall Street Journal (Eastern edition), July 23 2008, sec. B3.
12. Checker, M. 2005. Polluted promises: environmental racism and the search for justice in a southern town. New York: New York University Press.
13. Checker, M. 2007. "But I know it's true": environmental risk assessment, justice, and anthropology. Human Organization 66(2): 112-124.
14. Checker, M. and M. Fishman. 2004. Introduction. In M. Checker and M. Fishman (eds.) Local actions: cultural activism, power, and public life in America. New York: Columbia University Press. Pp1-25.
15. De Rijke, K. 2013a. Hydraulically fractured: unconventional gas and anthropology. Anthropology Today 29(2): 13-17.
16. De Rijke, K. 2013b. The Agri-gas fields of Australia: black soil, food and unconventional gas. Culture, Agriculture, Food, and Environment 35(1): 41-53.
17. De Melo-Martín, I., J. Hays, and M.L. Finkel. 2014. The role of ethics in shale gas policies. Science of the Total Environment 470-471: 1114-1119.
18. England, J.L. and S. Albrecht. 1984. Boomtowns and social disruption. Rural Sociology 49(2): 230-246.
19. Entrekin, S., M. Evans-White, B. Johnson, and E. Hagenbuch. 2011. Rapid expansion of natural gas development poses a threat to surface waters. Frontiers in Ecology 9(9): 503-511.
20. EWG (Environmental Working Group). 2009. Free pass for oil and gas: environmental protections rolled back as western drilling surges: oil and gas industry exemptions. Online [accessed December 16 2013]. http://www.ewg.org/news/news-releases/2009/03/26/free-pass-oil-and-gas-environmental-protections-rolled-back-western.
21. Ferguson, J. 2005. Seeing like an oil company: space, security, and global capital in neoliberal Africa. American Anthropologist 107(3): 377-382.
22. Finewood, M.H. and L.J. Stroup. 2012. Fracking and the neoliberalization of the hydro-social cycle in Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale. Journal of Contemporary Water Research and Education 147(1): 72-79.
23. Fortun, K. 2004. From Bhopal to the informating of environmentalism: risk communication in historical perspective. Osiris 19: 283-296.
24. Fortun, K. 2011. Biopolitics and the informating of environmentalism. In Kaushik, S.R. (ed.) Lively capital. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Pp283-296.
25. Freudenburg, W.R. 1981. Women and men in an energy boom town: adjustment, alienation, and adaptation. Rural Sociology 46: 220-44.
26. Gilmore, J.S. 1976. Boom towns may hinder energy resource development: isolated rural communities cannot handle sudden industrialization and growth without help. Science 191: 535-540.
27. Ginsburg, F. 2004. Forword. In M. Checker and M. Fishman (eds.), Local actions: cultural activism, power, and public life in America. New York: Columbia University Press. Ppix-xvii.
28. Hamburger, T. and A.C. Miller. 2004. Halliburton's interests assisted by White House: the administration has lent support to a lucrative drilling technique: some in the EPA consider it an environmental concern. Los Angeles Times. October 14 2004.
29. Healy, S. 2014. The biopolitics of community economies in the era of the Anthropocene. Journal of Political Ecology 21: 210-221.
30. Holzman, D. 2011. Methane found in well water near fracking sites. Environmental Health Perspectives 119(7): a289.
31. Horwitt, D. 2011. Cracks in the façade: 25 years ago EPA linked fracking to water contamination. Environmental Working Group. Online [accessed December 16 2013]. http://static.ewg.org/reports/2011/fracking/cracks_in_the_facade.pdf.
32. Howarth, R.; R. Santoro, and A. Ingraffea. 2010. Methane and the Greenhouse-gas footprint of natural gas from shale formations. Climatic Change 105(4): 679-690.
33. Hudgins, A. 2013. Fracking's future in a coal mining past: subjectivity undermined. Culture, Agriculture, Food, and Environment 35(1): 54-59.
34. Hudgins, A. and A. Poole. 2014. Framing fracking: private property, common resources, and regimes of governance. Journal of Political Ecology 21: 303-319.
35. Jackson, D.D. 2011. Scents of place: the dysplacement of a First Nations community in Canada. American Anthropologist 113(4): 606-618.
36. Jackson, R.B., A. Vengosh, T.H. Darrah, N.R. Warner, A. Down, R.J. Poreda, S.G. Osborn, K. Zhao, and J.D. Karr. 2013. Increased stray gas abundance in a subset of drinking water wells near Marcellus shale gas extraction. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110(28): 11250-11255.
37. Jacquet, J.B. 2012. Landowner attitudes toward natural gas and wind farm development in northern Pennsylvania. Energy Policy 50: 677-688.
38. Kirsch, S. 2006. Reverse anthropology: indigenous analysis of social and environmental relations in New Guinea. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
39. Langston, N. 2010. Toxic bodies: endocrine disruptors and the lessons of history. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
40. Latour, B. 1993. We have never been modern. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
41. Legal Environmental Assistance Foundation (LEAF). 1997. Legal Environmental Assistance Foundation Inc. v. United States Environmental Protection Agency. 45 ERC 1033, 27 Envtl. L. Rep. 21,385, 11 Fla. L. Weekly Fed. C 335 No. 95-6501. United States Court of Appeals, Eleventh Circuit. Aug. 7. 118 F3d 1467.
42. Martinez-Alier J., Anguelovski I., Bond P., Del Bene D., Demaria F., Gerber J.-F., Greyl L., Haas W., Healy H., Marín-Burgos V., Ojo G., Porto M., Rijnhout L., Rodríguez-Labajos B., Spangenberg J., Temper L., Warlenius R. and I. Yánez. 2014. Between activism and science: grassroots concepts for sustainability coined by Environmental Justice Organizations. Journal of Political Ecology 21: 19-60.
43. McKenzie, L.M., R.Z. Witter, L.S. Newman, and J.L. Adgate. 2012. Human health risk assessment of air emissions from development of unconventional natural gas resources. Science of the Total Environment 424: 79-87.
44. McKibben, B. 2011. The ugliest word in the English language: fracking. Sojourners. Online June20 2011 [accessed January 12 2013]. http://sojo.net/blogs/2011/06/20/ugliest-word-english-language-fracking.
45. Mercer, A., K. de Rijke, and W. Dressler. 2014. Silence in the midst of the boom: coal seam gas, neoliberalizing discourse, and the future of regional Australia. Journal of Political Ecology 14: 279-302.
46. Merrill, T. 2013. Four questions about fracking. Case Western Reserve Law Review 63(4): 970-993.
47. MITEI (MIT Energy Initiative). 2011. The future of natural gas: an interdisciplinary MIT study. Cambridge, MA: MITEI.
48. Mitman, G. 2007. Breathing space: how allergies shape our lives and landscapes. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
49. Murphy, M. 2006. Sick building syndrome and the politics of uncertainty: environmental politics, technoscience and women workers. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
50. Nader, N. 1981. Barriers to thinking new about energy. Physics Today 34(9): 99-104.
51. Nash, L. 2006. Inescapable ecologies: a history of environment, disease and knowledge. Berkeley: University of California.
52. Nijhuis, M. 2006. How Halliburton technology is wrecking the Rockies. On Earth Magazine. Summer.
53. Oreskes, N. and E.M. Conway. 2010. Merchants of doubt: how a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming. New York: Bloomsbury Press.
54. Osborn, S.G., A.Vengosh, N.R. Warner, and R.B. Jackson. 2011. Methane contamination of drinking water accompanying gas-well drilling and hydraulic fracturing. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108(20): 8172-8176.
55. Parr, J. 2010. Sensing changes: technologies, environments, and the everyday, 1953-2003. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
56. Pearson, T.W. 2013. Frac sand mining in Wisconsin: understanding emerging conflicts and community organizing. Culture, Agriculture, Food, and Environment 35(1): 30-40.
57. Peluso, N. and M.J. Watts (eds.). 2001. Violent environments. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
58. Penningroth, S.M., M.M. Yarrow, A.X. Figueroa, R.J. Bowen, and S. Delgado. 2013. Community based risk assessment of water contamination from high-volume horizontal hydraulic fracturing. New Solutions. 23(1): 137-166.
59. Perry, S.L. 2011. Energy consequences and conflicts across the global countryside: North American agricultural perspectives. Forum on Public Policy 2011(2). Online [accessed September 29 2011]. http://forumonpublicpolicy.com/vol2011.no2/archivevol2011.no2/perry.pdf.
60. Perry, S.L. 2013. Using ethnography to monitor the community health implications of onshore unconventional oil and gas developments: examples from Pennsylvania's Marcellus Shale. New Solutions 23(1): 33-53.
61. Poole, A. and A. Hudgins. 2014. "I care more about this place, because I fought for it": exploring the political ecology of fracking in an ethnographic field school. Journal of Environmental Sciences and Studies 4 (1): 37-46.
62. Rappaport, R.A. 1994. Human environment and the notion of impact. In B.R. Johnston (ed.) Life and death matters: humans rights and the environment at the end of the millennium. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira. Pp157-169.
63. Rolston, J.S. 2013. Specters of syndromes and the everyday lives of Wyoming energy workers. In S. Strauss, S. Rupp, and T. Love (eds.), Cultures of energy: power, practices, technologies. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press. Pp213-226.
64. Santiago, M.I. 2006. The ecology of oil: environment, labor and the Mexican revolution 1900-1938. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
65. Sawyer, S. 2004. Crude chronicles: indigenous politics, multinational oil and neoliberalism in Ecuador. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
66. Simonelli, J. 2014. Home rule and natural gas development in New York: civil fracking rights. Journal of Political Ecology 14: 258-278.
67. Steinzor, N., W. Subra, and L. Sumi. 2013. Investigating links between shale gas development and health impacts through a community survey project in Pennsylvania. New Solutions 23(1): 55-83.
68. Theodori, G.L. 2009. Paradoxical perceptions of problems associated with unconventional natural gas development. Southern Rural Sociology 24(3): 97-117.
69. Tsing, A. 2005. Friction: an ethnography of global connection. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
70. United States Environmental Protection Agency. 2012. Study of the potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water resources: progress report. Online [accessed December 29 2012]. http://www.epa.gov/hfstudy/pdfs/hf-report20121214.pdf.
71. Watts, M.J. 2001. Petro-violence: Community, extraction, and political ecology of a mythic commodity. In N. Peluso and M.J. Watts (eds.) Violent environments. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Pp189-212.
72. Watts, M.J. 2003. Economies of violence: more oil, more blood. Economic and Political Weekly 38(48): 5089-5099.
73. Watts, M.J. 2005. Righteous oil? Human rights, the oil complex and corporate social responsibility. Annual Review of Environment and Resources 30: 373-407.
74. Willow, A. 2014. The new politics of environmental degradation: un/expected landscapes of disempowerment and vulnerability. Journal of Political Ecology 21: 237-257.
75. Willow, A.J., D. Vilaplana, D. Sheeley and R. Zak. 2014. The contested landscape of unconventional energy development: a report from Ohio's shale gas country. Journal of Environmental Sciences and Studies 4(1): 56-64.
76. Wylie, S. 2011. Corporate bodies and chemical bonds: an STS analysis of natural gas development in the United States. PhD Dissertation. Cambridge, MA: Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
77. Wylie, S. and L. Albright. 2014. WellWatch: reflections on designing digital media for multi-sited para-ethnography. Journal of Political Ecology 21: 320-348.
78. Wylie, S., K. Jalbert, S. Dosemagen, and M. Ratto. 2014. Institutions for civic technoscience: how critical making is transforming environmental research. The Information Society: an International Journal 30(2): 116-126.