Fueling Resistance

... Neville's new book is a welcome respite, offering a more human-centred approach to understanding energy politics. Based on deep field research in two very disparate places, Kenya and Tanzania, and two completely different issues, biofuels and natural gas fracking, respectively, Neville provides a thought-provoking consideration of what type of energy revolution societies will choose to follow. * Andy Hira, Professor of Political Science,Simon Fraser University *
The world faces a growing number of inter-related crises: climate change, ecosystem collapse, systemic racism, and economic inequalities, in addition to the current pandemic. Such dire outlooks necessitate drastic action. New technologies promising to absolve us of these crises can prompt a gold rush-type mentality. Investors rush in and policymakers quickly issue permits. It seems baffling, perhaps even frustrating, that communities or even environmental advocates would resist such technologies. Kate Neville's beautifully written book helps explain this resistance and makes an important contribution to our understanding of why sustainable and inclusive transitions are so difficult to realize. * Jennifer Allan, Global Policy *
Biofuels and fracking were initially heralded as 'triple win' processes, promising to lower emissions, diversify energy, and spur development. However, Neville traces how the aggressive push by governments, corporations, and agro-industry to expand biofuels and fracking threatened the land tenure and environmental health of communities in Kenya and the Yukon. In a stunningly well-written book, she illustrates how marginalized people can nevertheless resist concerted pressure on their natural resources through coalition building and multilevel activism. * Kemi Fuentes-George, Middlebury College *
In this ambitious and beautifully executed study, Kate Neville expertly navigates the contested terrain of fracking and biofuel politics from the global to local levels. Her framework illuminates the deep but previously obscured connections between the global political economy of energy and the local politics of contestation. In doing so, her study helps us to see how the intersecting forces of finance, ownership, and trade relations drive convergent dynamics of contestation over fracking and biofuels in locations as seemingly disparate as Canada's Yukon and Kenya's Tana delta. * Sikina Jinnah, author of Greening through Trade: How American Trade Policy is Linked to Environmental Protection Abroad *
From the tar sands, fracking, oil pipelines, coal mining, through to biofuels and even wind turbines, the terrain of environmental politics has become centered increasingly on the fractious politics of energy extraction. Kate Neville explores these dynamics across wildly divergent places as well as for the different technologies of fracking and biofuels. She shows powerfully and in meticulous detail how these conflicts nevertheless display many commonalities, which have their roots in a common political economy driving the projects that trigger common dynamics of protest. A brilliant way into understanding the politics that will enable or prevent us achieving sustainability in the energy sphere. * Matthew Paterson, University of Manchester *
Can political economy help us understand why some energy projects generate considerably more resistance than others? Kate Neville has produced a model for excellence in comparative environmental and energy politics research — demonstrating the value of theorizing across seemingly different national contexts and energy technologies, exploring contentious politics and political economy frameworks, and conducting careful empirical fieldwork and engaged critical reflection. And it's beautifully written as well! * Stacy D. VanDeveer, University of Massachusetts Boston *
Fueling Resistance sets a new standard for social movement scholarship and, more pragmatically, illuminates the political terrain for environmental activists. It explains how international finance, ownership, and trade shape energy projects and, paradoxically, offer tools of resistance. Neville has produced a wonderfully insightful and elegantly written book. * Paul Wapner, author of Is Wildness Over? *