Energizing Democracy, or Democratizing Energy?

References:

Mitchell, T. 2011. Carbon Democracy: Political Power in the Age of Oil. NY: Verso.

Mains, Daniel. 2012. “Blackouts and Progress: Privatization, Infrastructure, and a Developmentalist State in Jimma, Ethiopia.” Cultural Anthropology 27(1): 3-27.

Schwenkel, Christina. 2015. “Spectacular Infrastructure and its Breakdown in Socialist Vietnam.” American Ethnologist 42(3): 520-534.

http://www.centerforsocialinclusion.org/about-us/mission-vision/

anaheim.net

(The starting point of this blog entry was inspired by Christina's fieldwork vignette in 2015 “Spectacular Infrastructure" that prompted me to think about water/energy in our daily life and our relationship to the infrastructures that make such necessities possible - or not.)

As we move from the discussion of water to energy this week, I hark back to the monthly utility bill and think for a moment about how in spite of the drought, the City of Anaheim - supposedly one of the greenest cities nationwide - never seems too concerned. There are policies and talk, but it is a tourist city. A mega tourist city. It has to perform - so the landscapes will always be lush, especially around Toontown. Anaheim boast itself as

“one of the nation's premier municipalities and is one of California's most populous cities.  Anaheim covers 50 square miles with more than 351,000 residents and more than 2,900 City employees.  The municipal corporation's annual budget is $1.7 billion.  Anaheim supports a thriving business community with companies such as: Carl Karcher Enterprises, Inc.; L-3 Communications; Pacific Sunwear; and Disneyland Resort.  Successful sports franchises call Anaheim home, including: Angels Baseball; Anaheim Ducks; the U.S. Men's National Volleyball Team, and the 2012 Olympic Games Silver Medal winning U.S. Women's National Volleyball Team.  Anaheim also boasts world-class meeting and entertainment venues with: The Anaheim Convention Center, LEED-certified and the largest on the west coast; Honda Center; City National Grove of Anaheim; Anaheim GardenWalk; Angel Stadium of Anaheim; and ARTIC (Anaheim Regional Transportation Intermodal Center). In addition, Anaheim embraces its vibrant cultural arts community, including the world-renowned Anaheim Ballet. Annually, Anaheim welcomes more than 25 million visitors to the City, truly making it where the world comes to live, work and play.”

A whooping 25 million of visitors each year. It makes me wonder: How much energy (and water!) do these visitors consume? So that night back in fall 2015, when a blackout rolled across our neighborhood in South Anaheim, the first thought that came to my mind was: Is the electricity also out at Disneyland? It would only be fair if there was a black out there as well. But then, how did people manage? I never had the luxury of time to research whether the blackout did go through Disneyland, and how they managed there (they always do, it seems). But I remained convinced that they should not have the privilege of running electricity when my family savored the impromptu full-moon watching in our backyard (yes, we managed to make the most of the situation, and rather enjoyed the temporary absence of electricity). I had candles on hand, and as long as we didn't open the fridge too often, our food should be safe till the next day. With the lights all out, things just eased out and slowed down. I could hear traffic on Katella softened up and became quiet. It felt like being thrown back into nature and in time - knowing that we could be returned to civi-light-ation any minute. So we savored the moonlight. Coincidental boon of a blackout on a full-moon night.

But I shouldn't be thinking about ‘fairness' only when electricity is NOT running (which, as Christina points out several times in the quarter, that is how it is: people often pay attention to infrastructures during malfunctions). I should be thinking about fairness most of the time, when there is in fact electricity running through the lines. The City of Anaheim does favor businesses in its energy programs, such as giving them a much higher rebate percentage for solar panels, or priority over residential applications. So these practices might not be fair to residents. Mains (2012) suggests that instead of analyzing the overarching neoliberalism or even specific forms of neoliberalisms, that it it is much more productive to look at the “correlations between specific techniques of governance and relations of power". As Christina's fieldwork vignette suggests, there were local practices dated back to the 1970s in the building at the genesis of the blocks and new ways to respond to a leak (such as her self-directed expedited repair) might prompt new discussions and affects.

The question of who should be responsible for breakdowns and repairs remains. We touched upon this topic in Week 5 in regard to failed social housing projects and the lack of sustainable maintenance. Energy distribution, like most everything else in life, does not promise equality or fairness.

Fairness is an arbitrary concept because it depends on the interlocutor and his/her relationship to the speaker. In Carbon Democracy, Timothy Mitchell (2011) shows how “Fossil fuels helped create both the possibility of modern democracy and its limits.” The ‘oil curse' in the Middle East is treated as “an affliction only of the governments that depend on its income, not of the processes by which a wider world obtains the energy that drives its material and technical life”. The abstraction of the oil itself works to shroud the uneven practices of procurement and distributions, of resources and profits, between those in power and the subsidized lots. There is no one-size-fits-all democracy. The US has concerned itself with the ‘democracy curse' - the utopian conviction that its democratic formula will work for one and for all (yes, powerpoint would make it visually accessible). With its focus on the more intransigent engagements, the book shows how carbon energy helped manufacture forms of agency capable of effective intransigence. The relationship between democracy and oil is slippery. It is no surprise that “carbon energy and modern democratic politics were tied intricately together”. I was intrigued to learn how the First World War was fought over control of the oil regions in the Middle East. The conflict over oil resources remains, if not augmented. A century later, governments are still incapable of address the climate crisis of our planet, but Mitchell suggests that “socio-technical understanding of carbon democracy… offers a better way to overcome this obstacle to our shaping of collective futures”.

Thinking in terms of governance (Schwenkel 2015) and energy/water infrastructure, I explore alternative forms of energy management, like non-governmental agencies. The Center for Social Inclusion (CSI), for instance, concern itself with the mission “to identify and support policy strategies to transform structural inequity and exclusion into structural fairness and inclusion. We work with community groups and national organizations to develop policy ideas, foster effective leadership, and develop communications tools for an opportunity-rich world in which we all will thrive no matter our race or ethnicity.” CSI's vision is “to translate America’s changing demographics into a new source of power and prosperity for a society where all people can participate in solutions that help us all thrive.” CSI focuses on a wide range of issues, and one of its current foci is the Energy Democracy (other projects include: Transportation Equity, Broadband Equity and Food Equity, all with an emphasis on Transparency and Accountability).

With Energy Democracy, CSI launches “our new map pinpointing communities, particularly communities of color, who are building their local economies while taking into their own hands the fight against climate change by developing community-scale renewable energy projects.” A form of green citizenship as I related to Annand's term ‘hydraulic citizenship.' The community-scale focus reminds me of both Mains' (2012) suggestion to look at practices and Schwenkel's (2015) starting point of the block collective's perspectives and discourses. To return to one of the keywords we identified when we thought of infrastructure earlier this quarter: entanglements.

So with all these various stimulating readings and projects, I linger on the idea of how democratizing energy is also one way to energize contemporary democracy. One household at a time. One community at a time. One correlation (Mains 2012) at a time.