Subjects of the Sun

Solar Energy in the Shadows of Racial Capitalism

Myles Lennon (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

336 Seiten

2025
Duke University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4780-3178-9 (ISBN)

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In the face of accelerating climate change, anticapitalist environmental justice activists and elite tech corporations increasingly see eye to eye. Both envision solar-powered futures where renewable energy redresses gentrification, systemic racism, and underemployment. However, as Myles Lennon argues in Subjects of the Sun, solar power is no less likely to exploit marginalized communities than dirtier forms of energy. Drawing from ethnographic research on clean energy corporations and community solar campaigns in New York City, Lennon argues that both groups overlook solar’s extractive underside because they primarily experience energy from the sun in the virtual world of the cloud. He shows how the material properties of solar technology-its shiny surfaces, decentralized spatiality, and modularity-work closely with images, digital platforms, and quantitative graphics to shape utopic visions in which renewable energy can eradicate the constitutive tensions of racial capitalism. As a corrective to this virtual world, Lennon calls for an equitable energy transition that centers the senses and sensibilities neglected by screenwork: one’s haptic care for their local environment; the full-bodied feel of infrastructural labor; and the sublime affect of the sun.

Myles Lennon is Dean’s Assistant Professor of Environment and Society and Anthropology at Brown University.

Preface ix
Introduction: A Microgrid on the Margins 1
1. Shine 37
2. Space 77
3. Modules and Metrics 139
4. Bodies 211
Acknowledgments 281
Notes 283
Bibliography 295
Index 312

Erscheinungsdatum	19.04.2025
Reihe/Serie	Elements
Zusatzinfo	38 illustrations
Verlagsort	North Carolina
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	544 g
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Teilgebiete der Geschichte ► Kulturgeschichte
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Ethnologie
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Soziologie
ISBN-10	1-4780-3178-6 / 1478031786
ISBN-13	978-1-4780-3178-9 / 9781478031789
Zustand	Neuware