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I am wondering how the book's central concept,  "landscapes of power,"  can be used to think about energy and infrastructural projects outside the Navajo context? The four modalities of power that make up this landscape are deeply influenced by your ethnographic data, and throughout the book you emphasize the need to pay attention to the particularities of places and communities. Thus, I would surmise that other landscapes of power would consist of different configurations of modalities of power? If so, how would you advise research into these other landscapes? What would should scholars pay attention to?

What motivated the structure of the book and the use of the interludes in particular? I'd like to learn more about the decision to include them as interludes. What was the idea behind these moments of reflection that both supplement and bring a brief pause to the argument?

How has the book been received among the communities that you work with? What have been the consequences, if any, for those actors and organizations who were featured in your analysis?

I believe one of the most important aspects the book highlights towards the end of Chapter 4, through Chapter, and within the Conclusion is the idea of false environmentalism that emerges from skewed (i.e. false) science reports. Just as much as the business representatives boasting their environmentalism when building the water dam in the Philippines had hired a group of scientists to report the positive effects of carbon emissions (against those of coal), certain energy governance entities focus on similar false science. The book seems to incite a revolution in the way energy is conceptualized and governed as specifically related to the unique psychosocial, social, and traditional attachments populations have to places (Powell, 2018:160; 237; 239). In other words, building energy plants and governing them should not come at the expense of the populations who reside there (i.e. populations should not be relocated).

1. What recommendations do you have for studying vulnerable populations? What should be the focus and of what should one be careful, specifically?

2. What would you say makes the Dine and Navajo communities particularly vulnerable to government exploitation by green jobs and what would you say are some appropriate solutions to the foregoing as particularly related to the concept of the 'double whammy’ or the 'double bind'? 

3. How are, do you believe, households vulnerable to policies surrounding transformations of governance in weatherization and construction practices (if known)?

More than suggestions, I believe this text draws great parallels for discussing the interconnectedness of economic investments, energy activism, what Dr. Powell refers to as 'greening capitalism', and the right to pollute (Powell, 2018). Power is taken out of its rightful host and appropriated by larger institutions of colonization, where Indigenous nations work to produce power but don’t have the grid to use that power and are, thus, dependent of agents of capitalism in energy production (Powell, 2018). We can think about a transfusion of power moving from energy systems that exist today, to distributions of grid vulnerabilities, to the discrepancies in energy production within the Navajo nation and against their minimal consumption (Powell, 2018). In a broader outlook of the transfusion of power in energy systems, politics, and land, we can think about the process as compounding health and social vulnerabilities that affect energy and climate justice. 

"The complex “double bind” facing movements—at the same time that it faces tribal leadership—who because of colonial logics and legacies, must work both within and against the constraints of the state." (Powell, 2018: 137). This quote is particularly significant because it draws upon the previous accounts of the sovereign powers of the Tribes whilst also accounting for their interdependence on outside entities like the DOE, and other Federal institutions. It evokes the still colonial nature of the ruling entities in the United States and a consequent false sense of independence. This false sense of independence can seemingly be drawn from the disconnected and isolated energy systems present in the Navajo Nation, specifically where Dr. Powell highlights the Nation has lacking adequate access to water, electricity, paved roads and other opportunities (Powell, 2018: 115-116). The foregoing speaks quite directly to many in the Navajo Nation being energy vulnerable and lacking access to reliable utilities, day-to-day necessities, which also bridges the connections between energy vulnerability and energy rights.

Protests to demand inclusion as project-affected people

Oppositional mobilizations - “internal to the logic of the project” p153 - so people do not consider something less damaging to the land and animals or a way to do it with less extraction of resources and profit for elite people in Kathmandu or in Europe/the US/China who do not really have to bear any of the cost of it. 

The author thinks that information circulated about the shareholder model - financial education - would be helpful - he notes that it would have to be oversimplified and made into financial narratives even though it is a complex socioenvironmental decisions. But his final conclusion is more optimistic. I think this kind of corporate-led education is a big foreclosure.

The certifications, following through with trainings that were asked for, and doing the certification ceremony for an audience

Rhetoric of benefit-sharing

The high levels of buy-in; the quotes from locals themselves supporting the dam and the company, they can honestly boast strong local support of the projects - what better proof than that people have dug up their life savings from the ground to buy the stocks?

The corporate actors aren’t particularly fleshed out in this account. The World Bank people weren’t expecting the Nepalese people to come deliver demands in a very educated and efficient way 

Ah there was one part where the corporate actors feel like the Nepalese people who live near the dam sites are extorting them - in this case they don’t feel like they’re helping but rather conceding to unreasonable demands, the poor corporation has to be the government and the villagers have these crazy ideas about how much money the corporation has (the corporation does have the money… it’s extremely ironic)

We don’t get to know how the corporate actors feel about the shareholder model - do they begrudge the shares not being sold to their family or something like that, or do they recognize that this is really also a sharing of risk and cost, more than just being pure benefits in a ‘help’ way?

Power outages and material scarcity → moral and social authority for government and corps to act quickly - “Discursive momentum”

Hydropower has been reframed as a sustainable/green energy source, esp. With carbon finance, so now institutions like the World Bank are funding it - it is a responsible way to bring about development. In Nepal, the government is also trying to declare Nepal as “open to business” - the ethical thing to do is to let corporations in to build hydropower dams 

Local people are there with them - some people say they are willing to have their houses submerged, the government is the unethical party for blocking the development from happening - the quote from someone is ‘some foreign country should get Nepal and develop it’ (Rest 2012:113), p151 here.