Energy and Ethics?

• The contributors demonstrate how ethics emerge through people’s everyday thoughts and practices, whether they work in renewables, nuclear, or fossil fuels; whether they work in industry, policy, or advocacy; whether they produce, distribute, or consume energy
• It shows how to create an analytical space in which we can attend to people’s own experiences and evaluations without uncritically imposing judgements of how we would like the world to be
• By attending to the broader political and economic contexts in which these everyday energy encounters take place, this volume draws attention to the plurality and complexity that characterises the multiple and overlapping ‘ethical worlds’ in which we, our interlocutors, and other beings participate

Mette M. High is a Reader in the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews. Focusing on natural resources such as metals and fossil fuels, her research explores how global economic processes intersect with intimate moral views. She conducts research in Mongolia and the United States, and her recent publications include Fear and Fortune: Spirit worlds and emerging economies in the Mongolian gold rush (2017) and Exploring the anthropology of energy: Ethnography, energy and ethics (co-edited with J. Smith, 2017).

Jessica M. Smith is Associate Professor in the Engineering, Design, and Society Division at the Colorado School of Mines. Focusing on the American West, her research explores how people, from technicians to engineers and executives, experience work in mining, oil and gas. Her publications include Mining coal and undermining gender: Rhythms of work and family in the American West (2014); Exploring the anthropology of energy: Ethnography, energy and ethics (co-edited with M. High, 2017); and Engaging the underground: An STS field in formation (co-edited with A. Kinchy and R. Phadke, 2018).

Notes on contributors 

Introduction: the ethical constitution of energy dilemmas 
Mette M. High & Jessica M. Smith

1 Projects of devotion: energy exploration and moral ambition in the cosmoeconomy of oil and gas in the Western United States 
Mette M. High

2 The solar good: energy ethics in poor markets 
Jamie Cross

3 Orphaned wells, oil assets, and debt: the competing ethics of value creation and care withinpetrocapitalist projects of return 
Caura Wood

4 Boom to bust, ashes to (coal) dust: the contested ethics of energy exchanges in a declining US coalmarket 
Jessica M. Smith

5 The ordinary ethics of charcoal in northern Madagascar 
Andrew Walsh

6 Consulting virtue: from judgement to decision-making in the natural gas industry 
Arthur Mason

7 Fuel of fear and force: gasoline’s energetic power and its entanglement in composite ethics 
Amy Penfield

8 Greater goods: ethics, energy, and other-than-human speech 
Cymene Howe

Conclusion: Energy ethics and ethical worlds 
Hannah Appel

Index 

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