CAREER: Energy Transition on Rural America: Studying Cultural, Technological, and Economic Change

长期以来，农村社区一直是国家能源生产的基石。但在市场力量、环境变化以及太阳能和风能技术的改进的引领下，这些社区中的许多正在经历巨大的变化。这个项目通过研究农村地区和能源之间迅速变化的关系，提供了新的知识。这些变化在落基山脉西部感受到了最明显的变化，这些地区严重依赖化石燃料能源生产。从化石燃料到可再生能源的大规模经济、技术和文化转变对农村社区有何影响？这些变化对失去农村文化和社区意味着什么，这些地区如何才能最好地适应？这些发现将扩大我们对农村、低资本和服务不足地区的理解，特别是在美国西部，为快速变化的文化、政治、技术和经济环境下的政策提供信息。该项目在三个方面促进了科学知识的发展，首先，它开发、实施和传播了一种创新的混合方法方法，将计算社会科学与农村社区长期的人种学实地考察相结合。这种方法特别适合于上述研究问题，并将有助于其他社会科学家将大规模数据科学与实地考察相结合。第二，它推动了农村和环境研究超越其历史焦点(例如，在铁锈地带和阿巴拉契亚地区)，以应对研究不足的美国西部地区的不同动态。第三，它响应了领先学者的呼吁，对农村与能源的关系进行更深入、更有经验的研究。在这样做的过程中，这项研究构建了一个新的理论框架，综合了社会学、能源研究、科学技术研究、宗教、经济学和法律的研究。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Rural communities have long been the nation's cornerstone for energy production. But many of these communities are undergoing immense change, led by market forces, environmental changes, and the improvement of solar and wind technology. This project contributes new knowledge by examining the rapidly changing relationship between rural areas and energy. These changes are felt in sharpest relief in the Rocky Mountain West, in places that have depended heavily on fossil-fuel energy production. How are rural communities affected by large-scale economic, technological, and cultural shifts away from fossil-fuels toward renewable energy? What do these changes mean for the loss of rural culture and community, and how can these areas best adapt? The findings will expand our understanding of rural, low capital, and underserved areas, especially in the Western U.S., to inform policy in a rapidly changing cultural, political, technological, and economic environment. The project advances scientific knowledge in three ways, First, it develops, implements, and disseminates an innovative mixed-methods approach that blends computational social science with long-term ethnographic fieldwork in rural communities. This approach is especially suited to the research questions above, and will help other social scientists to blend large-scale data science with on-the-ground fieldwork. Second, it advances rural and environmental research beyond its historical foci (e.g., on the Rust Belt and Appalachia), to account for different dynamics in the under-researched Western U.S. Third, it takes up the call from leading scholars for deeper and more empirically grounded study of rural relationships to energy. In doing so, this study constructs a new theoretical framework that synthesizes research from sociology, energy studies, science and technology studies, religion, economics, and law.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.