This seminar explores the relationship between energy, history, and society in a global perspective. Energy issues are never purely scientific or technical, but deeply social: Taking the provincialization of thermodynamics as a starting point, we will trace the production and use of energy from the industrial age, through the age of empires and nation-states up to today’s renewables transition. Touching on the pre-industrial use of muscle and animal power to situate the modern energy condition, we will interrogate the relationship between energy and industry, ask how energy enabled global movement and communication, and examine the social, economic and political structures around the production and use of energy. Guiding questions are: How can energy be a historically specific concept and a universal human need at the same time? How did our highly energy-dependent world come into being – and is this a history of diffusion and adoption, or one of combined and uneven development? How did projects of colonization, development and state-building make use of energy resources and forge different social relations around them?
- Trainer/in: Daniela Ruß