INTRODUCTION: RECOVERING POWER FROM ENERGY – RECONSIDERING THE LINKAGES BETWEEN ENERGY AND DEVELOPMENT

John-Andrew McNeish and Axel Borchgrevink

A country without energy has no future. Simply put, a country without energy remains paralyzed; in a country where they fail to develop energy generation there are no investments ... Without energy they cannot publish the newspapers that are circulated in our country. Without energy they cannot transmit television programs, sports, culture, soaps, films, and politics ... nothing on television. Without energy there would be no radio in our country. The country would be completely silent ... (Daniel Ortega, president of Nicaragua, 20 March 2010)

Peru has enormous wealth in the mountain ranges because of the rainfall. It is estimated that 800 billion cubic meters of water fall on the mountains every year and flow down in the rivers towards the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. How can we make the most of it? Now that the price of oil has increased and will continue to increase, we should think of hydroelectric energy, which is renewable, almost unlimited, and clean ... it has to be done by large private or international capital that needs very long-term security to invest billions and to be able to recover the investment. But the dog in the manger says, 'Why should they make money off our waterfalls?' (Alan Garcia, former president of Peru, 28 October 2007)

Extractivism is not a destiny, but may be the point of departure to conquer it. Certainly it can be found condensed in all of the world's territorial divisions – much of which is colonial. And to break with this colonial subordination it is not enough to fill the mouth with insults against this extractivism, to stop producing and sink the population into further misery, to return to rights without modification and partial satisfaction of the basic needs of the population. This is precisely the trap of inflexible critique in favorof opposing extractivism ... (Alvaro Garcia Linera, vice-president of Bolivia 2012: 106–7)

Introduction

This book examines how energy has been converted into political and economic power in recent times in Latin America, and the consequences this mode of acquiring power has for society, politics and economics in the region. As may be gleaned from the statements above, struggles over the extraction and exploitation of energy resources to a large extent define the controversial nature of contemporary Latin American politics. Reflecting on societal development, we are particularly conscious of the ways in which our environments and natural resources structure our societies and the way societies also change the environment. It is not merely technology, but the politics, social struggle and institutional formations that occur in the dynamic relationship between humans and the environment which are transformative.

In suggesting this, Contested Powers challenges the orthodox treatment of energy resources in development studies on two levels. This volume demonstrates that contests over natural resources refract the international, national and sub-national fault-lines of sovereignty. Indeed we see that in many cases these contests involve attempts to define the character of popular sovereignty, in Latin America and elsewhere. The case studies in subsequent chapters cast light on the historical meanings and socio-economic values which underpin and articulate what we call resource sovereignty. Secondly, we argue that it is vital to see the varied articulations of resource sovereignty in the larger context of a global division of labour and nature.

The model of an economy based on knowledge and creativity popularized by market economics is the polar opposite of resource sovereignty insofar as it disguises more complex dependencies on labour and natural resources at home and abroad. Given these insights, the book calls into question simplistic assumptions, i.e. that the exploitation of energy resources equals development and modernity, and the opposite idea, that natural resource wealth is a 'curse' on national development. We argue that these overly optimistic and overly pessimistic assumptions are two sides of the same technocratic coin. At a time when fossil fuel extraction and use are widely recognized as factors promoting global warming, it is crucial to arrive at a more realistic understanding of the dynamics of energy struggles.

Contested Powers is also intended as a necessary corrective to the slogan 'think globally act locally'. Our research in Latin America leads us to stress the constraints of local environments and cultural habitus (Wacquant 2005). Transformations at the local level need to be understood in relation to expressions of power at an international level. The book is structured to reflect this critical theoretical orientation. As such it moves progressively between the fractured politics of citizenship at the sub-national level and on to efforts to make states more socially and politically coherent. Historically, states and political systems have used energy infrastructures as a means to make nations more coherent (Mitchell 2011). We argue that a pivotal issue for the fate of nations in the twenty-first century will be the dynamic interaction between local and international politics surrounding the production and consumption of energy.

This introductory chapter presents the theoretical foundation of the book (and the joint research project on which it is based). It starts by outlining our position, in contrast to other more mainstream approaches. In order to ground the theoretical discussion, this is followed by a broad overview of energy struggles in Latin America. Thereafter, we review existing literature relevant to our project, with emphasis on the two bodies of literature we have found to be particularly inspiring: anthropological approaches to the study of energy and the recent development of critical institutionalism....