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ABSTRACT
This special collection of Anthropological Quarterly aims to spark new ways of thinking about formations and operations of modern power. Specifically, the articles explore how energic forces and infrastructures interrelate with institutions and ideations of political power. In the hope of fanning sparks into flames, we juxtapose this process of exploration with the influential paradigm of "biopower" developed by Michel Foucault. All of the essays explore how modalities of "biopower" (the management of life and population) today depend in crucial respects upon modalities of energopower (the harnessing of electricity and fuel) and vice-versa. We emphasize especially the critical importance of exploring the juncture of biopower and energopower in the context of the rising importance of scientific and political discourse on anthropogenic climate change. As human use of energy is increasingly linked to the disruption and destruction of conditions of life (human and otherwise), the tensions between dominant energopolitical systems (like carbon fuel) and biopolitical projects (like sustainability) are increasingly evident, opening new possibilities of anthropological analysis. Both energopower and biopower, we conclude, are entering into a pivotal transitional phase.
Returning to the Anthropology of Energy
The articles in this special collection explore the intersection of energic forces and fuels with projects of governance and self-governance across the world today. To adopt our language here, we are studying the entanglement of "biopower" (the management of life and population) and "energopower" (the harnessing of electricity and fuel). Since biopower will undoubtedly be the more familiar term, I concentrate this introduction on mapping the origins and analytical method of "energopower." Since "energopower" is a new concept (Boyer 2011), a more extensive definition and discussion is obviously in order. But, first, it is important to position this intervention in the context of previous anthropological engagements with energy. Although a recent flurry of important publications in the "anthropology of energy" (e.g., Behrends et al. 2011, Crate and Nuttall 2009, McNeish and Logan 2012, Nader 2010, Strauss et al. 2013) underscores the field's contemporary vitality, the fact remains that this is not the first, but rather by our count the third, generation of anthropology's engagement of energy.
The first generation was defined principally by the work of Leslie White (1949, 1959), a maverick who granted energy a prominent place...