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Negative Ecologies: Fossil Fuels and the Discovery of the Environment By David Bond. Oakland: University of California Press, 2022. 262 pp.

Negative Ecologies: Fossil Fuels and the Discovery of the Environment By David Bond. Oakland:... Negative Ecologies provides a nuanced and relevant ethnographic portrayal of the political economy of hydrocarbons. It maps, with detailed cases spanning the Caribbean and continental North America, the destructive afterlife—or more aptly, the negative ecologies—of fossil fuels. The destruction wrought by fossil fuels is front and center: from extraction to transportation, refining, and combustion. Most importantly, Negative Ecologies draws the reader's attention to the ways in which the state apparatus, corporations, scientists, activists, and even affected communities are enrolled in redefining the slow violence of the oil economy, and its enduring and negative environmental health costs, as manageable (knowable and quantifiable) and governable (remedial and restorative). By the same token, the book convincingly details how the power of oil is being exercised and deployed to manage and govern the outsized effects of fossil fuels on both the human and nonhuman world, while also diffusing public discontent. In so doing, the relationality of the environment to fossil fuels becomes a perceptible matter of concern, such that “the rise of the environment mirrors the unbound consumption of fossil fuels” (p. 9). For example, the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico revealed the lack of baseline data and scientific http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png American Anthropologist Wiley

Negative Ecologies: Fossil Fuels and the Discovery of the Environment By David Bond. Oakland: University of California Press, 2022. 262 pp.

Fevrier, Kesha
American Anthropologist , Volume 125 (3) – Sep 1, 2023
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References (2)

Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
© 2023 by the American Anthropological Association.
ISSN
0002-7294
eISSN
1548-1433
DOI
10.1111/aman.13853
Publisher site
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Abstract

Negative Ecologies provides a nuanced and relevant ethnographic portrayal of the political economy of hydrocarbons. It maps, with detailed cases spanning the Caribbean and continental North America, the destructive afterlife—or more aptly, the negative ecologies—of fossil fuels. The destruction wrought by fossil fuels is front and center: from extraction to transportation, refining, and combustion. Most importantly, Negative Ecologies draws the reader's attention to the ways in which the state apparatus, corporations, scientists, activists, and even affected communities are enrolled in redefining the slow violence of the oil economy, and its enduring and negative environmental health costs, as manageable (knowable and quantifiable) and governable (remedial and restorative). By the same token, the book convincingly details how the power of oil is being exercised and deployed to manage and govern the outsized effects of fossil fuels on both the human and nonhuman world, while also diffusing public discontent. In so doing, the relationality of the environment to fossil fuels becomes a perceptible matter of concern, such that “the rise of the environment mirrors the unbound consumption of fossil fuels” (p. 9). For example, the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico revealed the lack of baseline data and scientific

Journal

American Anthropologist – Wiley

Published: Sep 1, 2023

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