Analyze

The text builds on the concepts "biopower" and "capital" and introduces the concept "energopolitics" to exisiting anthropolitical minima. In the text's introduction, Boyer disucsses the limitations of these concepts when universalized, because they are multiplicities that have been bundled into more nominal forms as part of analytic projects, and then expands on these concepts in order to situate them within anthropolitical and technopolitical domains in Mexico. For example, biopower, which can be defined as a practice of governance that denotes vast networks of enablement with many infrastructures and actors in order to optimize human life, and in Mexico the government put forth discourse around renewable energy development that discusses it as a means of guaranteeing or imporiving the health and welfare of human enviornments, economies, communities, and individuals. 

"Anthropological knowledge is perpetually incomplete, disrupted, uncertain, somehow less than the sum of its parts. It is the right kind of knowledge for grappling with what Anna Tsing and her collaborators have termed “a damaged planet.”"

"This is, then, a call for political theory to not so much “take ethnography seriously” as to accept ethnography’s invitation to unmake and remake itself through the process of fieldwork.  If we wish to appreciate difference within the Anthropocene, fieldwork is a much-needed supplement to any theory of power"

"Instead of an ideal dialectical process of self-realization through productive activity, “capital” signaled how the division of labor allowed labor power to congeal in such a way that it could be alienated from its source, circulate beyond the self, be appropriated and commanded by others, and thus be transformed into new social and material forms"

"The resistance to infrastructural transformation thus has less to do with the fear of blackouts or “energy poverty”—although societal paralysis and devolution continue to be conjured to delegtimate renewable energy transition—but rather because of a more basic but also invisible codependence between our contemporary infrastructures of political power and our infrastructures of energy."

"Getting wind power has less to do with land rents, let alone clean energy, than with getting running water for the village, making electricity more constant and reliable, and developing better transport linkages since the villagers had few vehicles of their own."

"So he founded the Yansa Group with the ambition to export the Danish model of “community wind” production to rural communities in developing countries in order to help democratize access to renewable energy expertise and technology and to serve as a powerful tool for community integration and development."

"Yansa-Ixtepec gives us a glimpse of how new energopolitical potentialities are struggling to come into being in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec (and not only there).Yansa-Ixtepec follows the charge of Scheerian thinking, seeking to harness renewable energy sources to transform and improve the social and political conditions of humanity, to bring justice and empowerment to long-marginalized indigenous communities in the postcolonial world. But instead of finding the Ixtepec high-voltage infrastructure of national enablement, Yansa-Ixtepec’s vision has been kept off grid in more ways than one."

"Elsewhere, we hear a few truly chilling stories, like the one about an intrafamily dispute over a hectare of land for which a rental contract is being sought. A man is said to have organized the rape of his cousin in order to get her to back away from her land claim"

"

"But in the zone where aeolian politics and anthropolitics intersect, we have seen how wind development has been avidly embraced by some as a means of concentrating wealth and power in the constant game of positional advantage in the city."

"For others, meanwhile, we have seen how wind parks are excoriated as worst kind of megaproyecto development, the sinister collaboration of local caciques and transnational capitalists to complete a centuries-long project of capturing and expropriating the wealth of the isthmus."

As the title of the work hints to, the text builds on discussions surrounding energy policy and energy investments. Throughout the work, Boyer (2019) discusses dimensions of energy transitions that range from job creation, forms of development (industry and otherwise). Most significant to take into consideration is the fact Boyer (2019) acknowledges energy development often occurs without at par social, political, and economic transitions. Boyer (2019) advances discussions of energy politics and transitions by highlighting the inherent problems energy transitions bring into communities where wind farm and green projects are envisioned. Here, we should note the impacts energy transitions may have on the most vulnerable populations, which have been and continue to be documented. In fact, it is documented that LMI communities tend to be least likely to sport energy-efficient, carbon neutral energy systems and appliances (Cluett et al., 2016; Elnakat, 2016; Kaza et al., 2014).

This text is particularly exemplary in documenting local community antagonism to energy transitions as it recognizes small-scale intrusions green energy may introduce. This varies from loss of agricultural planes to loss of fishing potential, as noises created by aeolian energy production can disrupt wildlife and their habitats. It is important to consider details like these in what can be considered microcosms of life. However, the text does not widely address how to move past these intrustions. Questions that still linger are: How can the introduction of green (aeolian and other) energy avoid damaging such microcosms? How can energy prices be made accessible to everyone thanks to the introduction of green energy instead of being used as an excuse to increase energy prices? What understandings are green energy investors missing to carry forward beneficial green energy projects? And, a question that the author asks from the beginning: How can the introduction of green energy benefit those communities in which projects are carried out?

This text historically traces the exploitative nature of energy supplies and charges (costs). Impactful statistics to consider in Oaxaca are that energy users pay for usage of one-hundred water plants when only twenty are operational but even more drastic is the fact energy companies overcharge residential customers to undercharge commercial customers (Boyer, 2019:100, 133). Here, we can think of COVID-19 parallels where nationwide job loss has burdened families' abilities to cope with utility bill payments. Companies have been pushing for cost/usage increases in residential sectors due to burdens experienced whilst contemporarily reducing cost/usage in commercial sectors. However, if burden experienced by residential customers is ignored, many will likely ask for subsidy payments, as CFE's customer base (98% of customers receive 70% off on their energy costs) (Boyer, 2019:152). The pre-COVID-19 burdens in Oaxaca have likely worsened since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, which should inform or at least direct wider discussions of energy rights as situated both within and outside a pandemic. More than informing understandings of COVID-19-situated conditions, this text provides us with the grounds to investigate pre-pandemic burdens and to discuss vulnerabilities to energy losses or scarcity, but also of the needs and willngness to promote efficiency, net-zero emissions, or even carbon neutral energy.

Like many other systems, energy systems are grounded in gender, race, and social hierarchies. Similarly, we can think of energy infrastructures today as continuing racist, gendered, and classist systems, particularly when we think of the energy vulnerbale populations that are particularly affected by the pandemic. Just as Dr. Daggett suggests, we need new energy systems to move away from energy wastes, energy inequality but also energy systems to account for compouded vulnerabilities as faced by the most at risk populations.

As we think of the COVID-19 and energy shifts due to closure for social distancing aims, we can think of Dr. Daggett's argument of energy systems modeled for energy intensive and productive labor. In a sense, despite COVID-19 shifting energy consumption to the residential area, we can argue COVID-19 has also led to an overall reduction in energy use for industrial sectors. However, these reduced expenditures are not as significant as energy analysts had anticipated and, instead, call to Dr. Daggett's discussions of energy governing labor and hierarchies, as developed in a 19th century world. We can think of ways in which our systems (socioeconomic and political) have become wholly dependent on energy production and, thus, even our leisure activities will inevitably lead to the consumption of energy. Our COVID-19 energy paradigms demonstrate energy is so engrained into our regimes, even social distancing measures cannot wholly reduce overall energy expendatures, despite best efforts. In a way, we should try to understand energy paradigms in Dr. Daggett's eyes as specifically situated in the COVID-19 pandemic.