This brief note suggests some directions that a rising Marxist anthropology might consider taking. Sandy Smith-Nonini and Donald Nonini have done a wonderful job explaining why Carbon Democracy is a “brilliant” book that is “essential reading for anthropologists” (2014), especially for those concerned with the political economy of fossil energy. Elsewhere, I have reviewed Timothy Mitchell’s book (Reyna 2012) and offered some suggestions concerning an approach to the anthropology of hydrocarbons (Behrends, Reyna, and Schlee 2011), so I do not propose to discuss here either the substance of Mitchell’s argument or the emerging literature on the anthropology of oil. Rather, I will explore two implications of Mitchell’s work for the very nature of the anthropological project. These implications deal with bloat (conceptual) and tents (pup and big top).
Tag Archives: Timothy Mitchell
Sandy Smith-Nonini & Donald M. Nonini: Fueling the Neoliberal Turn: Why We Need to Engage Timothy Mitchell’s “Carbon Democracy”
A central, perhaps the central, question in political economy today is how forces of democracy, including organized labor and its allies, can regain a degree of control over corporate capitalism in the neoliberal era. Equally pressing (and related) is our need to confront climate change and replace fossil fuels with alternative energy resources. While the silos of academia have splintered political economy from studies of energy, the beauty of Timothy Mitchell’s Carbon Democracy lies in his eloquent and comprehensive study that merges these two essential aspects of industrial production and modern society into an integrated analysis.