Wilcox+Abstracts

=**Memo: Abstracts (old)**= James Wilcox, Spring 2013


 * Collective Interventions at the Intersection of Energy Imaginaries and Embodied Practices** (bad title: need better, catchy one)

The collective imperative to reduce energy use across all sectors of society is only growing more urgent as the damaging effects of climate change and environmental destruction from fuel extraction increase, yet U.S. per capita energy use continues to remain extremely high even as per capita energy use increases around the globe. Despite an increasing number of relatively well-funded policy initiatives aimed reducing residential energy use—which accounts for approximately 22% of U.S. energy use—the amount of energy used in and around residential settings has not meaningfully decreased.

The aim of this study is to understand why such collective efforts to achieve significant reductions in residential energy use return only marginal results. As such, I use multi-sited ethnography and textual analysis to interpret residential energy policy interventions from multiple standpoints, perspectives, and positions without losing sight of the embodied sociotechnical practices that drive energy demand at the core of the analysis.

In opening the “black box” of residential energy demand and its apparent obduracy, this study further develops theories of everyday sociotechnical change while offering designers of conventional and unconventional interventions empirically-based analysis and recommendations.


 * Ethnography of Controversies around GM Agriculture**

Emerging GM agricultural regimes, such as the hyper-commercialization of seeds and agricultural practices, have proved to be controversial, as farmers and advocates have criticized the ecological impact of the GM seeds, the agricultural practices surrounding their use, and the increased financial burden the cost of GM seeds and their attendant practices put on farmers. The aim of this study is to understand the choices available to farmers, specifically the extent to which farmers are reasonably free to choose non-GM agricultural livelihoods in the current landscape. Data is drawn from a multi-sited ethnographic study of cotton farmers in the areas of India most acutely affected by farmer suicides, as well as advocates in the region, Monsanto officials, and local purveyors of Bt corn. The study documents the promises and pressures farmers face in pursuing alternatives to GM agricultural practices and analyzes the social consequences of the spiraling anxiety surrounding agricultural livelihoods in an age of GM crops.


 * Another interesting approach would be to interrogate global commodity chains that make cotton such a lucrative cash crop…and trace what happens to the end products…