Book ID: CBB510402598

The Birth of Energy: Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics, and the Politics of Work (2019)

unapi

Daggett, Cara New (Author)


Duke University Press


Publication Date: 2019
Physical Details: 280
Language: English

In The Birth of Energy Cara New Daggett traces the genealogy of contemporary notions of energy back to the nineteenth-century science of thermodynamics to challenge the underlying logic that informs today's uses of energy. These early resource-based concepts of power first emerged during the Industrial Revolution and were tightly bound to Western capitalist domination and the politics of industrialized work. As Daggett shows, thermodynamics was deployed as an imperial science to govern fossil fuel use, labor, and colonial expansion, in part through a hierarchical ordering of humans and nonhumans. By systematically excavating the historical connection between energy and work, Daggett argues that only by transforming the politics of work—most notably, the veneration of waged work—will we be able to confront the Anthropocene's energy problem. Substituting one source of energy for another will not ensure a habitable planet; rather, the concepts of energy and work themselves must be decoupled.

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Reviewed By

Review Thomson, Jennifer Christine (October 2020) Review of "The Birth of Energy: Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics, and the Politics of Work". Environmental History (pp. 796-798). unapi

Review Francesco Gerali (October 2021) Review of "The Birth of Energy: Fossil Fuels, Thermodynamics, and the Politics of Work". Technology and Culture (pp. 1287-1289). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB510402598/

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Authors & Contributors
David Bond
Shulman, Peter Adam
Simon-Stickley, Anna
Jeremy Davies
Boria, Edoardo
Johnson, Robert
Concepts
Energy resources and technologies
Science and society
Fossil fuels
Science and politics
Colonialism
Anthropocene
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
21st century
18th century
20th century, late
20th century, early
Places
North America
Italy
India
Great Britain
Congo (Brazzaville)
Africa, Sub-Sahara
Institutions
Great Britain. Royal Navy
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