The Birth of Energy

Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics, and the Politics of Work

Cara New Daggett (Autor)

Buch | Softcover

280 Seiten

2019
Duke University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4780-0632-9 (ISBN)

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In The Birth of Energy Cara New Daggett traces the genealogy of contemporary notions of energy back to the nineteenth-century science of thermodynamics to challenge the underlying logic that informs today's uses of energy. These early resource-based concepts of power first emerged during the Industrial Revolution and were tightly bound to Western capitalist domination and the politics of industrialized work. As Daggett shows, thermodynamics was deployed as an imperial science to govern fossil fuel use, labor, and colonial expansion, in part through a hierarchical ordering of humans and nonhumans. By systematically excavating the historical connection between energy and work, Daggett argues that only by transforming the politics of work-most notably, the veneration of waged work-will we be able to confront the Anthropocene's energy problem. Substituting one source of energy for another will not ensure a habitable planet; rather, the concepts of energy and work themselves must be decoupled.

Cara New Daggett is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Virginia Tech.

Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Putting the World to Work 1
Part I. The Birth of Energy
1. The Novelty of Energy 15
2. A Steampunk Production 33
3. A Geo-Theology of Energy 51
4. Work Becomes Energetic 83
Part II. Energy, Race, and Empire
5. Energopolitics 107
6. The Imperial Organism at Work 132
7. Education for Empire 162
Conclusion. A Post-Work Energy Politics 187
Notes 207
Bibliography 239
Index 255

Erscheinungsdatum	06.09.2019
Reihe/Serie	Elements
Zusatzinfo	7 illustrations
Verlagsort	North Carolina
Sprache	englisch
Maße	152 x 229 mm
Gewicht	363 g
Themenwelt	Naturwissenschaften ► Biologie ► Ökologie / Naturschutz
ISBN-10	1-4780-0632-3 / 1478006323
ISBN-13	978-1-4780-0632-9 / 9781478006329
Zustand	Neuware