ABSTRACT
This chapter describes an ongoing professional journey that began when the authors arrive in Groningen, a border province of the Netherlands, in 2012 to commence ethnographic research on the salience of regional affiliations in a transnational context. With epicenters near the gas wells in the Groningen gas field, earthquakes are increasing in frequency, from less than 20 per year in the early 1990s, to between 20 and 50 per year in the first decade of the 2000s, and between 80 and 125 per year since 2011. Catherine Besteman, in Three Reflections on Public Anthropology, describes anthropologists’ inimitable long-term relationships with their research populations and the ethical structures of obligation they forge as a result. The authors impress the importance of anthropology and of understanding the real-life worlds of people who are impacted by extraction outside of our disciplinary silos, for instance those in technical institutions and/or regulatory roles.
