Here there be dragons, in Bergen

As part of the launch of the new Energy Anthropology Network, I will be presenting a paper at the Energy Impacts: People, Responsibilities and the Contested Futures of Energy Developments conference in Bergen, Norway. This two and a half day conference will bring together academics and activists from around the world to reflect on the issues and concerns, including social, health, environmental and political impacts, related to energy infrastructure developments- from fracking to marine energy.

I’ll be talking about the importance of embodied knowledges of the sea, and how knowing about the absence of knowledge is crucial: in high energy areas of the sea, where commercial marine energy might be deployed, the sea is ‘unsurveyed’. Knowing where the map might have said ‘here there be dragons’ is empirically important. Erasing such knowledge through making an unmarked ‘blue frontier’ and ‘mare nullius’ is not just an erasure of local rights and relations, but the erasure of crucial embodied knowledge needed to get marine energy devices in the water and operational…

Hope to see you there to share the full paper…