Part 1
Complete these readings in preparation for the next class with Aneil Tripathy.
Readings
Interview with Patrick Bigger, “Up The Financier: Studying the California Carbon Market,” Anthropology and Environment Society, January 26, 2014.
Bigger, Patrick. “Hybridity, Possibility: Degrees of Marketization in Tradeable Permit Systems.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 50(3) (2018): 512–530.
Part 2
Guest speaker: Dr. Aneil Tripathy, MIT’s Climate & Sustainability Consortium (MCSC)
Readings
Günel, Gökçe. “Accumulation: Exploring the Materiality of Energy Infrastructure” in Maya Hojer Bruun et al. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of the Anthropology of Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. ISBN: 9789811670831.
Özden-Schilling, Canay. “The Infrastructure of Markets: From Electric Power to Electronic Data.” Economic Anthropology 3 (2016): 68–80.
Homework
Due: Ethnographic Task #1: Object Lesson
“The multiple dimensions that make up objects also make up ourselves, as well as our categories. Telling the stories of an object therefore begins unpacking our own clichés, our certainties, our affects.” - Joe Dummit, “Writing the Implosion: Teaching the World One Thing at a Time”
This assignment invites you to pick an object that is related to an aspect of energy that you are studying. Your ethnographic exercise is to look really closely at it and brainstorm all the “lessons” that this object tells. In so doing, you will hone your skills of “seeing” as an anthropologist, paying attention to details and speculating the wider connections about what this object is, what it does, what it may mean to different groups of people, and how it is embedded in wider historical, social, and geographic contexts. Documenting these lessons allows you to actively reflect on what you know, or think you know, about the subject that you are exploring.
Starting an ethnographic project with an exercise like this helps to illuminate lines of inquiry that you can later follow up with through other models of analysis (i.e., literature review, ethnographic interviews, participant observation). The exercise also helps you confront and grapple with some of your preconceived assumptions, biases, and beliefs early in the research process. Returning to your object lesson later, after conducting more research, can allow you to track how your thinking has changed, and in what specific ways. Think of this assignment as a kind of purposeful brain dump to help you get started.
Assignment Specifics
- Choose your object and make it as specific as possible. It can be something material, such as a light switch or an e-scooter, or it could be something discursive or textual, such as MIT’s Office of Sustainability’s statement of “Vision for a Net Zero Campus.”
- Set aside at least two uninterrupted hours for this assignment. Try to avoid distractions, as by turning off notifications on your phone/computer or multitasking. You want to be as focused on this exercise as possible. Please type up your notes so that I can easily read them. If you would like to do illustrations by hand (e.g., sketches, maps, tables), please digitize them and turn them as an attachment with your assignment.
- Before you begin the object lesson exercise, print the guiding questions document (linked below). These questions are lightly edited from anthropologist Joseph Dumit’s provocative article that inspired this assignment, “Writing the Implosion: Teaching the World One Thing at a Time.”
- Use these questions as a guide in your brainstorming. You do not need to respond to all of these dimensions and questions in your notes but do keep track of which dimensions and specific questions seem most relevant to your energy ethnography, which questions seem the most vexing to address, and which you want to dig into during your research.
- Your assignment will be your notes from observing the object and responding to the questions. Do not do supplemental research during this exercise like Googling or asking friends or classmates what they think. This is an exercise for you to grapple with your own observations, knowledge, assumptions, and beliefs. You do not need to edit your notes for style or grammar—write them up as they help you think through and analyze an aspect of your energy ethnography.
- Put yourself into the notes and feel free to add your reactions and subjective responses as you brainstorm. This is not meant to be a polished piece of objective writing. You are doing a kind of brain dump. But it also has an affective dimension. Record feelings that you experience in doing the exercise, like wonder, curiosity, frustration, cluelessness, etc.
An A-level object lesson assignment will show substantial and meaningful engagement with the guiding questions. You should have at the very minimum 4 or more pages of typewritten notes.
