RAPID: Tracking Emerging Trans-regional Energy Initiatives

这笔快速赠款为研究北非雄心勃勃的可再生能源发展项目的长期人种学田野工作奠定了基础。这个由公共和私人投资者组成的复杂联盟的伞形组织寻求将欧洲电网与一系列太阳能和风力发电场连接起来，并声称到2050年，这个价值4000亿欧元的“超级电网”可能能够满足欧洲15%的能源需求。这笔赠款允许对初始太阳能发电场的建设和上线进行紧急研究。这项研究将考察居民和该组织官员如何体验和理解这第一个关键组成部分的启动。研究人员将进行约十周的访谈和初步的人种学实地考察，首先是与总部及其附属机构的组织工作人员，然后是地方官员和社区。这位民族志专家将考察在北非能源资源开发规划中运作的文化视角，并将这些视角与居住在初始遗址附近的当地人和社区如何理解环境投资和发展的影响进行比较。在这个雄心勃勃的跨洲计划中，什么样的物质、基础设施和文化差异被汇集在一起，以及参与其中的人是如何体验和谈判的。欧洲和北非利益攸关方之间复杂的政治关系以及资本和技术转让是如何组织和管理的？在比较欧洲历史上的殖民主义干预与其目前对北非可再生能源的开发时，有哪些比较和对比可能是相关的？这项民族志研究将帮助我们理解新一代跨国界、跨地区能源发展的跨文化动态、伦理问题和现实生活。

This RAPID grant establishes the foundations for long-term ethnographic fieldwork examining an ambitious renewable energy development project in North Africa. The umbrella organization for a complex nexus of public and private investors, seeks to connect Europe's power grid to a series of solar and wind farms with claims that this 400 billion euro "super grid" of electricity production may be able to supply 15% of Europe's energy needs by 2050. This grant allows for urgent research on the construction and bringing online of the initial solar farm. The research will examine how residents and the organization officials experience and understand the launch of this first critical component. The researcher will conduct approximately ten weeks of interviews and preliminary ethnographic fieldwork first with organization staff at its headquarters and those of its affiliates, then with local officials and community. The ethnographer will examine the cultural perspectoves that operate in the planning of the development of energy resources of Northern Africa and compare these to how local people and communities living near the initial site understand the implications of environmental investment and development. What kinds of material, infrastructural, and cultural differences are brought together in this ambitious trans-continental project, and how are they experienced and negotiated by people involved "on the ground." How are complex political relationships, and transfers of capital and technology, between European and North African stakeholders, structured and managed? What comparisons and contrasts may be relevant in weighing Europe's historically colonialist interventions against its current development of North African renewable energy resources? This ethnographic study will help us to understand the trans-cultural dynamics, ethical issues, and lived realities of a new generation of trans-border, trans-regional energy development.