Graduate Thesis Or Dissertation
 

Chinese and International Engineers on the Belt and Road: Culture, Knowledge and Lives on a Renewable Energy Project

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  • Energy issues are becoming one of the most pressing topics in today's political and cultural landscape, particularly in the midst of the climate crisis. Globally, a variety of renewable energy projects are under development to meet energy demand without continuing to overburden the natural environment of our planet, with profound geopolitical and social-economic consequences. Inspired by research in Anthropology, Science and Technology Studies, and related fields, I use an ethnographic approach in this thesis to explore the identities, knowledge production processes, and lived experiences of a community of engineers working on a multinational renewable energy project site in Israel. I explore how this particular project (a pumped-storage hydropower project) relates to China’s Belt and Road Initiative, a multi-trillion dollar investment in infrastructure in many parts of the world At the intersection of technology and the environment, these engineers worked to shape and maintain networks of interconnection. Engineers from Europe, China, and the Middle East, together with their multi-layered networks of interconnection, constructed a unique engineering culture characterized by “turbulence,” as China emerges as a global renewable energy leader. In the context of renewable energy engineering, this turbulence, with its instability and uncertainty, is the new paradigm leading us to an unknown energy future.
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  • Pending Publication
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  • 2020-06-10 to 2022-07-11

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