Re-centering Energy Justice

Re-centering Energy Justice

Re-centering Energy Justice

Uninsulated waste heat ducts link two coal-fired power plants and a planned industrial park in the remains of a village in Jiangsu Province, China, May 2014. Image credit: Jia Ching Chen

Re-centering Energy Justice is a Research Focus Group that aims to address critical debates within the field, while upholding the conviction that the movements, practices, and debates among Indigenous communities worldwide and societies of the Global South are central and not auxiliary to understanding humanity’s deep entanglements with energy. The following inquiries guide our interdisciplinary approach:

• How are frontline and indigenous communities disproportionately affected by entrenched energy regimes and ignored in energy justice debates?
• Why have such injustices been normalized and perpetuated in energy transitions?
• How can scholars work with communities to address social and ecological inequities?

Re-centering Energy Justice will foster the continuation and growth of the successful community-building and research outcomes initiated during the 2018- 2019 Mellon Sawyer Seminar on Energy Justice in Global Perspective at UC Santa Barbara https://energyjustice.global.ucsb.edu/about. The objectives of this RFG are (1) regularly convene an interdisciplinary community of engaged scholars who are invested in critical debates on energy justice and (2) support work-in-progress by those graduate students and faculty in the Humanities and Social Sciences who are engaged in producing new scholarship in the field.

Conveners:
Jéssica Malinalli Coyotecatl Contreras, Anthropology
coyotecatlcontreras@ucsb.edu

Mona Damluji, Film and Media Studies
damluji@ucsb.edu