Suchergebnisse

This paper explores an informal acoustic method developed by a group of industrial geologists working in geothermal energy landscapes in the southwest of Iceland. Through a series of ethnographic descriptions, this paper renders the work these geologists carry out in sonic terms, emphasizing how they use their bodies as sonic detectors in the production of geological evidence. Sound, the paper argues, is what allows geologists to make the intractable problem of volcanic cooling doable. It does this by differentiating two forms of evidence. Primary evidence, which ends up as data in geological reports, and secondary sonic evidence, which is what establishes that this primary evidence is, in fact, evidence. The paper introduces the concept data echoes as a way to think about how sound articulates between these evidential protocols. As echo, sound works as an outside, which, while remaining external to official protocols of knowledge production, nevertheless helps to constitute distinctions that are meaningful to the production of those categories. As data echoes through the various moments of data capture, analysis, and model building, sound's temporal form helps to predict the time frame of volcanic cooling, as it affects both the immediate energy production scenarios and the long durée of volcanic time.

This paper offers an ethnographic perspective on the relationship between resource landscapes and the state in Iceland during a period of financial experimentation. In particular, it analyses a shift from the production of thermal water for local use to the production of electricity for the global aluminium market. This shift, the paper argues, is not merely a technocratic exercise in further resource extraction, it also indexes some of the tenuous connections between resource making and state making. The paper ends by offering a perspective on the recursive relationship between resource instabilities and instabilities within the state.

This paper is an ethnographic exploration of the volcanic landscapes of Iceland, where the extraction of geothermal energy for the production of aluminum is triggering anthropogenic earthquakes. As the aluminum industry seeks to decarbonize their industrial infrastructure, they are increasingly looking to renewable energy havens, such as Iceland, to supply their expansive energy needs. While this paper is partly about understanding the forms of politics at stake in decarbonizing modernity's infrastructures, it is more specifically concerned with the temporal politics of anthropogenic earthquakes in the Hengill volcanic zone in the south west of the country. The paper takes up the perspective of geologists tasked with analysing the emergence of these new earthquake forms, as well as locals from a small town in the vicinity who are learning to live with them. While focusing on the conflict that has ensued in the wake of earthquake production, the article pays particular attention to the importance of acceleration - both economic and geologic - in their making. This leads to an analysis of how alternate temporal renderings of anthropogenic earthquakes invoke competing claims about the future. Anticipating the future, the paper argues, is a form of temporal politics through which the various actors either legitimise, or protest against, these volcanic interventions.

Mounting evidence of increasing carbon and nitrogen levels, warming and acidification of the oceans, as well as ongoing biodiversity loss, has led scholars within the natural sciences, particularly Earth Systems science and geology, to reconceive humans as geophysical force-makers with planetary effects. Such claims have prompted scholars within anthropology and science and technology studies (STS) to reconsider the varying specificities of the relationships within and between humans and the earth under conditions of environmental urgency. This dissertation makes an intervention into these discussions through an ethnographic and practice based approach to the study of renewable energy. It does so by examining the production of geothermal energy in the Hengill volcanic zone in the southwest of Iceland. The analysis that is produced is based upon an engagement with the practices, ideas and concerns of some of the central actors connected to the volcanic zone as it is transformed into a controversial site of energy production for aluminium smelting. I draw upon varying analytical resources from within both anthropology and science and technology studies. Conducting ethnographic fieldwork with those who make geothermal energy (geologists) as well as those who protest against its production (residents living in the vicinity of the volcanic zone) allows me to understand how geothermal energy is produced and resisted through particular sets of practices and technologies. At the same time it also allows for a detailed analysis of how the forces of the subterranean are converted into energy resources that are so valuable to the Icelandic nation. Successfully making these conversions, from forces to resources, requires not just complex technical work, but also a range of political initiatives. Carrying out ethnographic fieldwork with key actors allows me to examine how this complex techno-political work is carried out and to what effects. However, drilling deep in the subterranean of a highly active seismic area is dangerous and risky. In producing geothermal energy, other consequences are produced along the way, the most prominent of which is "man-made" earthquakes. The derivative production of earthquakes in the volcanic zone leads me to analyse the geological, financial, and political conditions through which this volcanic landscape is being appropriated and transformed for energy production. More specifically, this dissertation examines how the mixing of geological forces and the forces of capital are accelerating parts of the landscape, and generating new phase shifting thresholds. Examining events unfolding in Hengill through the analytics of acceleration and phase shifting thresholds makes a contribution to debates within anthropology and STS about how to conceptualise processes of rapid change. Accelerating, I argue, is not only a process of doing things more quickly and therefore a quantitative endeavour; it is, in fact, also a qualitative process, which can alter the very nature and composition of our world. Changes in speed can also lead to changes in kind. The dissertation makes an intervention into these debates as technological and digital practices relentlessly quicken the pace of life, and at a time when collective human actions are seen to be accelerating 'nature' as the planet overheats. A focus on acceleration, therefore, allows me to analyse the urgent issues of energy supply and rapid environmental change both from a temporal and political perspective. Conceptualising the varying temporalities that emerge through such processes of acceleration, as well as the political responses to them is an important part of the work of this dissertation.

All of the contributions to this special issue are occupied with how to engage data otherwise. This otherwise indexes the rich variety of approaches to data beyond what we are currently witnessing. Whether through the development of politically and ethically relevant forms of data experiments, or the construction of alternative visions of the much-critiqued data infrastructures of powerful platform providers, all the articles reflect upon how we––as scholars and citizens––can live and work with data in ways amenable to diverse, critical, and ethical forms of social existence. This introduction intervenes in this debate in its own particular way, principally by considering what it means to characterise the contemporary as a data moment. The term data moment, we argue, works as a conceptual device calling for more ethical-political engagement with data practices. At the same time, it also retains a temporal inflection. Moments, we claim, are not sequential steps in a linear process, but are themselves productive of, and products of, temporal orders. Moments are also saturated in affect, we argue, and it is such affects that contribute to how particular forms of meaning emerge with/as data. By embracing the compelling empirical, theoretical and ethical challenges of this data moment our ambition with this special issue is to make a modest contribution to how scholars can engage data in the present, while also shaping a future where data are treated critically, ethically, and reflexively.