Electrifying Anthropology: Exploring Electrical Practices and Infrastructures 2019002793, 2019015661, 9781350102651, 9781350102668, 9781350102644

Table of contents :
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
List of figures
Notes on contributors
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: Current thinking – an introduction
Introduction
Situating electricity
Articulations of electrification
The structure and themes of the book
Thinking through electricity
Notes
References
Chapter 2: Electricity is not a noun
Not a thing, stolen
The same story, again differently
Thinking with things, for better or worse
Of containers and turns of phrase
A case in point
Being in time
Unwieldy
Notes
References
Chapter 3: Widened reason and deepened optimism: Electricity and morality in Durkheim’s anthropology and our own
Automatic reactions
Forces and feelings
Collective powers
The ideal of force
A different constitution
Reason and optimism
Notes
References
Chapter 4: No current: Electricity and disconnection in rural India
No current
The electric village
To whom the current flows
The solar future
Only disconnect
References
Chapter 5: What the e-bike tells us about the anthropology of energy
Cycling routines
Materiality
Sensory stimuli
Dependency
Temporality
Discussion
Note
References
Chapter 6: At the edge of the network of power in Japan, c. 1910s–1960s
Not so much of a bright life: Electricity comes home
‘Consumers cheat companies’: Electricity theft and misappropriation
Culture of safety and energy governmentality
Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 7: Can the Mekong speak? On hydropower, models and ‘thing-power’
Alternating currents: Electricity and climate change in anthropology
Stopping one flow to start another
Knowing the Mekong
The ‘thing-power’ of models
How to minimize the thing-power of dams
The curve of electricity
Can the Mekong speak?
Notes
References
Chapter 8: Electrification and the everyday spaces of state power in postcolonial Mozambique
Electricity and the state
Mozambique’s evolving energy provision system
Electricity, contested territory and state power
Statecraft and the practice and discourse of rural electrification
Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 9: Big grid: The computing beast that preceded big data
Big grid was before big data
Big grid is an instance of big data
Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 10: Touring the nuclear sublime: Power-plant tours as tools of government
The technological sublime
Sublime tourists and nuclear power
The genealogy of openness
Demonstrative safety and the controlled gaze
The paradox of nuclear transparency
Humanizing the industrial monster
Managing human resources
Conclusion
Notes
References
Chapter 11: Afterword: Electricity as inspiration – towards indeterminate interventions
References
Index