Seminar: "Contesting abundance: coloniality through work and energy in Chiloé", by Gabriela Cabaña

Gabriela Cabaña, from the London School of Economics and Political Science, will be giving a seminar at ICTA-UAB.

Title: "Contesting abundance: coloniality through work and energy in Chiloé"

Speaker: Gabriela Cabaña, PhD candidate Anthropology Department, London School of Economics and Political Science

Date: Tuesday, January 10th 2022
Time: 12 to 13h
Venue: Sala Antoni Rosell (Z/022- Z/023) ICTA-UAB
 

This paper will propose a theoretical framework to understand the emergence of the value of work and energy through the case of Chiloé, an archipelago in the south of Chile, currently seeing a rapid increase in wind farm projects. The main argument is that understanding certain activities as 'work' is not a universal or default category; its imposition has relied worldwide on different institutions, like slavery and, in the case of Chiloé, the Spanish-imposed encomienda. Exploring this colonial origin of the value of work as an end in itself can help illuminate the deeper meaning of the quest for increasing the productivity of nature —in the form of energy—that is being presented by the state as an embodiment of the common good. The universe of meaning displaced by colonialism —one of freer, more playful social arrangements— can offer a fertile counterpoint to the ecomodernist notion of abundance at the heart of ongoing efforts to decarbonise energy systems.