摘要：In recent years, there has been a rekindling of anthropological interest in energy and its relationship to economy, culture, and society, mainly motivated by two global crises: the approaching end of the oil era and global warming (Strauss et al. 2013; Mitchell 2011; Huber 2013). As Dominic Boyer (2014) points out in a recent special issue of Anthropological Quarterly, while anthropological interest in energy is in the process of rebounding from a mid-twentieth-century lull, Leslie White (1943) drew energy to the center of debates on human development in the 1930s and 1940s. White’s evolutionary theory of development was controversial, but his insights on the importance of energy in the development of modern capitalism stimulated new thinking that incorporated energy into discussions surrounding political economy and societal development. This legacy—critiqued and furthered by Laura Nader (1980, 2010) over the past three decades—features prominently in several new books and articles on the deep integration of energy, political economy, and development. In Carbon Democracy, Timothy Mitchell (2011) proposes that classic political economy treated energy and environment as exogenous to society. He argues that energy, development, and political power are integrated at local, national, and global levels. This integration constitutes “socio-technical worlds, in which what we call social, natural and technical processes are present at every point” (Mitchell 2011, 239). Matthew Huber (2013), writing about oil and economic development in the United States, contends that oil has not only enabled capitalist political economy, but has permitted householders to incorporate capitalist principles in the ways they create and manage the home and household.
