Event: MAKS Research Seminar: Inside the energy salon: aesthetics and literal meaning in elite policy settings (Sabbatical Wrap-Up)
Date: 14 July 2023
Time: 11:15
Venue: MKS414, Level 4, MAKS Building
Programme:
11:15
Presentation: Inside the energy salon: aesthetics and literal meaning in elite policy settings (Sabbatical Wrap-Up)
Speaker:
Prof. Arthur Mason (Department of Social Anthropology, Norwegian University of Science & Technology, Trondheim, Norway and Department of Anthropology, London School of Economics, London, UK)
Hosted by:
Faculty of Media & Knowledge Sciences
12:00
Q & A session/informal discussion
Admission is free, but kindly reserve a place by sending an email.
Abstract:
Shifts in the terrain of energy politics have given rise to consultant experts who produce and distribute knowledge of energy futures. Drawing on fieldwork at executive roundtables in cities across the Global North, this lecture examines the consolidation of this form of expertise and the opulent settings in which it is distributed. By exploring the role of aesthetic judgement in market-orientated decision-making, it contributes to anthropological work on elites, expertise, and energy ethics by highlighting the relationship between credibility and luxury.
Speaker’s Profile:
Associate Professor Arthur Mason is a political anthropologist specialising in the study of adverse impacts of climate change for land and marine ecosystems, and local ways of life. He is completing a book manuscript titled Energy Image: Hydrocarbon Aesthetics of Progress and Form which draws on affective imagery to convey ideas on the formation of energy planning. His recent edited volume Arctic Abstractive Industry: Assembling the Valuable and Vulnerable North (Berghahn 2022) brings together diverse engagements with natural resource extraction and ecological vulnerability in the contemporary Arctic.
