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BIOETHNOGRAPHY: “Thus, instead of combining objects of inquiry (biology and culture), I conceived of bioethnography as combining two different methods for knowing the world (Mol 2002, 153)—ethnographic observation and biochemical sampling—in order to ask and answer research questions that could not be addressed through either method alone. This methodological focus involves exploring how our data collection and analysis might be shaped if we suspended the nature/culture binary” (Roberts, 2021, p. 2)

“bioethnography asks, what if we created numbers otherwise, upending the cooked data that reinforces inequality? In fact, bioethnography can enable us to identify structural forces, such as NAFTA and the global health apparatus itself, that are part of the bodily processes that make ill health. In other words, while we know that all data is cooked, it matters how it’s cooked.” (Roberts, 2021, p. 5)

Roberts describes their ongoing bioethnographic collaboration with a team of exposure scientists who are working in environmental engineering and health. Though ethnography is not easily enumerated, Roberts emphasizes that integrating it with quantitative data is worthwhile and makes for “better numbers”. As an example, Roberts describes 3 bioethnographic projects on neighborhoods, water distribution, and employment and chemical exposures. These projects were part of a longitudinal birth-cohort study in Mexico City called Early Life Exposures in Mexico to ENvironmental Toxicants (ELEMENT), created to understand the effects of early-life nutrition and exposure to toxicants (such as lead and phenols). Overtime, this project was expanded to include the study of new toxins (e.g. BPAS, mercury, and fluoride) and new health concerns (e.g. obesity, meopause, sleep).

Roberts’ focus on neighborhoods was produced from the ethnographic observation that neighborhood characteristics might influence exposure levels. Following this observation, Roberts’ and ELEMENT researchers sorted participants by neighborhood and identified significant differences in blood-lead levels. Additionally, Roberts applied previous ethnographic observation and scholarship to argue that high levels of toxicants like lead correlate with the capacity of neighborhoods to withstand other dangers, such as police violence. These findings prompted the development of two new bioethnographic project centered on water and the effect of neighborhood dynamics on health.

This image is related to my research as it shows how authorities created and mobilized standards to discipline certain behavior in the name of education

Energy is still seen as something we all need. The lights must say on, even under COVID-19, a national crisis with no end in sight, our current levels of energy consumption must remain the same. COVID-19 has not caused people to ask fundamental questions like "why do we use so much energy, do we need to? what even is energy?" We had even failed to do this to some extent. Electric companies offer payment options and plans, but their relationship to their customer has not fundamentally changed under COVID-19.

The main way I will use this text in our future survey project is when crafting questions about energy. Our previous energy survey was built without an understanding of how "energy" came to be. We didn't question the fundamentals of how our understanding of energy came to be. Now that we have this knowledge, I think we can ask questions that get people to think about energy. Simple questions like "what is energy" and "why is energy important to your life" can serve to test some of the books claims. We can see if people think of energy like the book states: the ability to do work and some scientific measurement of that ability.

This text builds off of Marx's concept of the ruling idea. According to Marx, many concepts and ideas that are embedded as "common sense" in our society today exist to profilerate and benefit the ruling class. The book builds of this theory in multiple ways. For example, we view coal as one of, if not the only viable ways to power our sociey because the characteristics of coal most benefit the ruling class. It does not require communual effort like water and can be used all year round. On top of this, the way energy and work are intertwined also benefits the working class. We think of those that don't work as wasting their energy, when in reality they show that people do not need to work in the capitalistic sense of the word.

The biggest example of this is the scientific study of energy and entropy. The first two laws of thermodynamics somewhat contradict each other, but play into this idea that the earth is under our control. The second is even used to often justify forcing people into work, stating that if they waste energy, they cannot reuse it.

Daggett conducts a genealogy of energy in order to gain a new line of attack on the problem of energy transition that doesn’t fall into the contemporary trap of choosing between a future of ascetic sustainability or fossil-fueled growth that leads to cataclysm. She attempts to achieve this by decoupling energy from work. In her words, “Without challenging dominant practices of work and leisure, and the high valuation of waged, productive work in a neoliberal economy, it will remain difficult to dislodge fossil fuel cultures” (2019, 11).

The first half of Daggett’s book looks at the early history of energy science and the development of the first two “laws” of thermodynamics (largely through the study of steam engines), arguing that both the rationalizations of and the motivations for developing these laws can't be adequately explained without considering 1) the influence of Protestant ethics and worldview on scientific thought and 2) the social and political pressures of capitalist industrialization. Once developed, this new thermodynamic understanding of energy set the conditions of possibility for a new geo-theology of energy and a new work-waste mode of energopolitics.

In the second half of the book, Daggett focuses on the latter energopolitical turn, showing how these new ways of conceiving and using energy were taken up and applied as new metaphors and logics for understanding and governing society (primarily centered around maximizing efficiency and profit), arguing that these metaphors and logics enabled the powerful to naturalize and rationalize the various forms of racial, gender, and class oppression that persist to this day.

In her conclusion, Daggett employs a feminist conception of post-work politics to point towards a feminist conception of energy politics, where energy is conceived of as a means of reproducing human and nonhuman life rather than a means for producing commodities and profit.