ABSTRACT
Declining fossil fuels and increasing volatility in energy provisioning promise accelerating change in the configuration of energyscapes for people around the world. In this chapter, we examine a different type of change—one not of looming shortages but of peasants’ cultural understandings, socioeconomic condition, 1 and the energo-politics in which they become enmeshed as they acquire electricity for the first time. In the process, rural identities are reconstituted in ways that highlight locals’ agency even as they remain off grid and energy-poor.
