Energy and the Political Economy of Capitalism

Call for Papers: 2008 AAG Meeting, Boston, MA, April 15-19

Energy and the Political Economy of Capitalism

Organized by Matt Huber (Clark University) and Diana Ojeda (Clark University)

How can we theorize the relationship between energy and capitalism? What are
the contingent power relations that emerge from the centrality of
fossil-fuels to the production and reproduction of capitalist social
relations? Would a transition to ‘alternative’ energies necessarily
accompany transformations in the social and political relations of capitalism?

As the geopolitical and ecological politics of energy loom large in the
headlines, this call for papers seeks contributions that attempt to
integrate energy into a geographical understanding of capitalism. Following
recent theoretical and empirical work into the political economy of nature
(e.g. Heynen et al. 2007; Mansfield et al. 2007), we assert that
energy-society relations provide an underexplored terrain for critical inquiry.

We especially seek contributions that integrate a conception of energy
within already established social theories of nature-capital relations (e.g.
ecological Marxism, the regulation approach, ecological modernization
theory, ecological economics).

Possible topics include but are in no way restricted to –

- Theorizing fossil-capitalism
- Energy and dialectics
- Energy and cultural hegemony
- Energy consumption and neoliberal governance
- Oil, geopolitics and international finance
- The politics of the energy-state
- Peak Oil: Malthus revisited or geological calamity?
- Bio-fuels, land-use, and the “food versus fuel debate”
- Energy, economic growth, and the politics of climate change
- Capital accumulation and alternative energies
- The (new) political ecology of nuclear power
- The political ecology of access to and control over natural gas

Abstracts of no more than 250 words should be sent to Matt Huber
(mhuber@clarku.edu) and Diana Ojeda (dojeda@clarku.edu) by October 15.