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As outlined in this brief article by the U.S. Energy Information Administration, energy consumption by New York City alone has dropped significantly more than the surrounding areas. On a prima-facie observation, one could say the foregoing alleviates stress on the existing energy infrastructures. However, deeper analyses should consider the repercussions that demanding less energy may have on production, supply, and distribution, as well as transitions between larger and smaller electric microgrids. Given energy infrastructures in the United States are already vulnerable, can it be really said the pandemic alleviates stress on the existing energy infrastructures when everybody is connected to the internet and is generally using more technology at home?

"Scott and Chakrabarty’s critiques tell us less about postcolonial studies’ limits than about the difficulty even its most eminent scholars have keeping its history in mind"

"Advocating resistance and critiquing the conditions of resistance are not, contra Scott, inherently opposed or even separate activities"

"During his “ethical turn,” Derrida reconceived the ultimate point of such deconstructive reading: no longer articulating différance it became instead responding to the experience of the other (Derrida 2002: 230–98; Spivak 1999: 426–8)."

"It becomes instead the capacity and willingness to surrender its agency to the other, thus exposing itself to a future it cannot control. Levinas’s redefinition of the human attempted, in its own way, to place the Hegelian tradition on its feet again. Though Gramsci and Fanon are both frequently assimilated to that tradition (as Scott’s and Chakrabarty’s critiques illustrate), the intellectual’s relationship to the colonized in their work prefigures, if again inchoately, the ideas of responsibility and futurity evident in Levinas and Derrida."

"The problem with Orientalism is precisely its ontological—not ethical—approach: the Orientalist seeks knowledge of the other to master it, decidedly not to protect its epistemic difference. [... ] Orientalism thus declares an epistemological as well as ontological difference between the European and the non‐European. Indeed, the former is the very source of the latter: Europeans and Orientals are different types of being precisely because they have different ways of knowing."

"[T]o think of responsibility as a freedom, you need that very humanistic education which teaches rebellion against it” (Spivak 2012: 461).4 “Humanist education” in general trains the “ethical reflex” in precisely the same way literary study in particular does: it opens one to forms of consciousness fundamentally different from one’s own. Such openness eventually requires one to “rebel” against one’s training itself: the oth- erness of some text—indeed, perhaps every text—will exceed what one has been taught."

"If Marxism responded to capitalism dialectically, wanting to replace it with a single and even more universal system, anti‐globalization movements now respond to capitalism deconstructively, wanting instead to articulate the disparate demands of those who build the global economy but are neither seen nor heard there. If they remain so, who will crawl, Spivak asks, “into the place of ‘the human’ of ‘humanism’ at the end of the day, even in the name of diversity?” (Spivak 2005: 23)."

"[T]he genealogy of postcolonial theory recounted here—from Gramsci and Fanon through Said and Spivak to Chakrabarty and Scott—can be read as a necessarily endless effort to rethink the revolutionary principle of freedom from the perspective of those to whom it was never designed to extend."

shortly attaching this news article on "coronavirus lockdown protests" to this reading. should be an obvious one to all. 

Re: the discussion on "our" concepts of freedom

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Adding a popular quote - from Kafka's "A Report to an Academy" 

I fear that perhaps you do not quite understand what I mean by "way out." I use the expression in its fullest and most popular sense—I deliberately do not use the word "freedom." I do not mean the spacious feeling of freedom on all sides. As an ape, perhaps, I knew that, and I have met men who yearn for it. But for my part I desired such freedom neither then nor now. In passing: may I say that all too often men are betrayed by the word freedom. And as freedom is counted among the most sublime feelings, so the corresponding disillusionment can be also sublime. In variety theaters I have often watched, before my turn came on, a couple of acrobats performing on trapezes high in the roof. They swung themselves, they rocked to and fro, they sprang into the air, they floated into each other's arms, one hung by the hair from the teeth of the other. "And that too is human freedom," I thought, "self-controlled movement." What a mockery of holy Mother Nature! Were the apes to see such a spectacle, no theater walls could stand the shock of their laughter.

No, freedom was not what I wanted. Only a way out; right or left, or in any direction; I made no other demand; even should the way out prove to be an illusion; the demand was a small one, the disappointment could be no bigger. To get out somewhere, to get out! Only not to stay motionless with raised arms, crushed against a wooden wall.

“Enterprising attempts at incorporating local communities ‘on the margins’ into the ‘universal rationality of good business practice’ (Rajak 2011a: 17). In doing so, CSR activities seek to maintain low levels of resistance to corporate proposals.” p72. Also cites Welker2009_CorporateSecurityBegins. The Lord2016 is also a good example of this. 

An attempt to constrain critique with a survey of feedback about how to do the presentation of information of the scientists “better” and “more simply” 

“Members of the community, while criticizing the adequacy of scientific reporting as not telling the whole truth, accept to some extent the proposition that further information can be found, and that thereby they may possess this knowledge. However, focusing on technology as a form of knowledge and seeking to know its dimensions avoids questions regarding how things come to count as “knowledge and “not knowledge.” in the first place (Riles 2004). Insistence of better transparency allows for the possibility that transparency might in fact be possible: it “leaves the world itself intact. Intentionally or not, it depends on maintaining the absolute difference between representations and the world they represent” (Mitchell 2002:4).” p78

Policy brochures to publicize mitigation, “sustainable” activities, and community investment programs. Global companies often anticipate/precede the local government regulations. 

Use the fact that the government’s actual regulations are obscenely loose or nonexistent to say they are “Much more responsible than the law dictates” - a quote from a community liaison officer she interviewed. P71. Even if their levels are bad they can hide behind being “Better” than the standards. 

Signing the contract is a symbolic acknowledgement of the indigenous people’s rights to the land and to bargain with the company. (Though, of course, their water is still being totally wrecked, and the company lies to them). 

Lots of science - data - new technology to measure more accurately - scientists presenting, holding the reporting meeting

Tried to use photo evidence - but it was rejected because the indigenous people in the audience recognized that they were using the same photos from three years ago - which then caused additional “rejected the authenticity of the material that was being presented” -p75

Using the word “stable” (estable) to say it’s ok or that the impact is negligible - when in fact this can’t be known and it’s deeply improbable that it’s true - and even if the damage is “Stable” and not escalating, it is probably already at an unacceptable level. 

The manager of social relations person put his body in between the questioning indigenous person rejecting the truth value of the data and the scientist. 

Asking for feedback -because they know the community members are suspicious of their scientific data

The visit to the new drilling site - though it seemed like they were secretly extracting and they didn’t tell much and they couldn’t do anything about the fact that the corporation had already drilled way more than what they initially proposed they needed to drill to “monitor”

The interactions the corporation has with the indigenous people and the relationships they try to make are attempts to morally legitimate the extraction

They are giving the “gift of truth” about their activities with their reporting, they feel like they are conceding to their demands when they do the reporting and take them on tours, the investment in the community relations teams and the workshops to educate about science and having meals with the community members - I think the corporate actors are always aware that their goal is to quell resistance, but they might think that their presence is actually good for the indigenouspeople in in the long run once they start providing funds for community development and conceding to these demands and giving them “education”

“Company reporting on the environmental and social impacts of mining activities may by its very existence thus be projected as a “moral good”, an open gesture of asserted high moral value” p71 - cites a bunch of sources including Rajak2011_TheatresOfVirtue

Reporting to/ consulting with the community is one of the central “moral mechanisms” of CSR, and going to these reporting meetings is important to the people who are “impacted community” members. -  “The discourse of transparency is thus central to the moral framework of engagements between corporate actors and communities” -p72. 

Another way to say the same things: “Such CSR instruments - social accounting, community development investment, and transparency reporting - establish principles of “good business” and are used to make the claim of corporations acting as “agents of world benefit” (Maak and Pless 2009).” -p72 The source is a journal of business ethics. 

Standardization - “measures of fact and accounting assert that company activity is best made visible and internationally comparable (see also Li 2011)”. P72. The source is a Focaal article from the same issue as the Rajak. 

“Concerns with translocal legibility and universal administrative acceptability and the focus on rational economic behavior linked to audit have created an ethic of the visible, the transparent, as the highest standard of governance.” p72. She cites Garsten and Lindh de Montoya 2008, Peck and Ticknell 2002. 

The community people do think it’s an improvement to have any relationship with the corporation. They’re frustrated in part during their tour of the new digging that they won because only 2 people were there and one was a junior scientist and the other was from the contractors 

There’s parallel solutions on both sides (the tech, better info presentation vs participation in scientific monitoring, own experts) to increase participation and increase truth

In the case of Chile, to the extent that they exist, the laws for environmental mitigation/regulation are not really enforced. So any “responsible” actions are “lustered with voluntarily” and done totally on the corporation’s own terms. 

“social accounting” & “audit” techniques and institutions - they are “created by global business in concert with governments and civil society” . “performance requirements”

By the initiation of very obviously affected local indigenous communities, there is a legal contract between the mine’s foundation and the indigenous community that the mine would provide annual reporting to monitor the environmental impact and show that their water extraction was within the agreed-upon amount. The foundation otherwise funds social investment CSR programs for the mining company. They also agreed to give some annual money to community development in the contract. 

It’s not a unified CSR field, even for same industry in same region - some are opposed to providing money for community development, and only give money to local government or enterprises

Increasing staff hired on the social relations team - taking part in OXFAM workshops - “increase staff capacity and improve corporate ‘social performance’”p76

People on all sides seem to be fluent with the lingo of participatory development and CSR - the discourse has permeated and it’s become established

When the reporting meetings turn out to be “a waste of time” because community members don’t get much from the scientists, they switch to doing volunteering at the community and workshops to capacitar people to understand scientific info