Analyze

As a hobby, tabletop role-playing games have a dubious history of appropriation of non-western fantasy tropes as supplemental, and othered. Advanced Dungeons and Dragons' Oriental Adventures (1985), and Al- Qadim (1992) tokenized East Asian, and Middle-Eastern mythology, respectively. Since the onset of Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition (2014), it's publisher, Wizards of the Coast, makes claims to progress in its depictions of BIPOC communities, by bringing in folks to talk about their own cultures, such as with Journeys through the Radiant Citadel (2022). More fundamentally however, the release of 5th edition and the hobbies resurgence coincided with the proliferation of crowdfunding platform Kickstarter, allowing new voices to populate the hobby space. Adventure games like the all indigenous Coyote and Crow allow for a non-colonial view of North America that presents indigeneity beyond traditionalist tropes, offering advanced technologies like Yutsu Lifts, Second Eyes, and Nisi. The horror game Old Gods of Appalachia offers a marginalized region the chance to celebrate their heritage, and reshape the narrative around Appalachia. The focus on local, and indigenous authorship may offer benefits beyond a sense of authentic representation. When utilized therapeutically, these games may work to address intergenerational trauma, and offer therapeutic insights specifically built to unmoor the legacies ascribed onto these groups by dominant and colonial powers. 

Thomas, Brian J. 2023. "Local Games for Local Trauma." In 4S Paraconference X EiJ: Building a Global Record, curated by Misria Shaik Ali, Kim Fortun, Phillip Baum and Prerna Srigyan. Annual Meeting of the Society of Social Studies of Science. Honolulu, Hawai'i, Nov 8-11.

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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.