RAPID: Tracking Emerging Trans-regional Energy Initiatives

这项RAPID赠款为在北非开展一项雄心勃勃的可再生能源开发项目的长期人种学实地考察奠定了基础。该组织致力于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，这个耗资4000亿欧元的电力生产“超级电网”可能能够满足欧洲15%的能源需求。这笔拨款允许对最初的太阳能农场的建设和上线进行紧急研究。该研究将调查居民和组织官员如何体验和理解这第一个关键组成部分的启动。研究人员将进行大约十周的面谈和初步的人种学实地调查，首先与总部的组织工作人员及其附属机构的工作人员进行面谈，然后与当地官员和社区进行面谈。人种学家将研究在北非能源开发规划中运作的文化观点，并将这些观点与居住在最初地点附近的当地人和社区如何理解环境投资和发展的含义进行比较。在这个雄心勃勃的跨大陆项目中，什么样的物质、基础设施和文化差异被汇集在一起，以及“在地面上”参与的人如何体验和协商这些差异。欧洲和北非利益相关者之间复杂的政治关系、资本和技术转移是如何构建和管理的？在权衡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，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跨文化动态、伦理问题和新一代跨国界、跨地区能源发展的生活现实。

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.