ABSTRACT
Energy—its production, its consumption, its very conception and articulation—circulates at the core of human endeavor, and yet as a topic of anthropological scrutiny it has been relatively overlooked until recently. This scholarly neglect is both puzzling and regrettable, as the value of an anthropological approach to energy is its rigorous focus on the sociocultural conditions of energy, as well as attention to the dizzying range of phenomena that might constitute 'energy' variously defined. One major issue of importance to environmental anthropology involves the structural resource imbalance and rapaciousness of capitalism and industrialization as they impact peripheries. Anthropologists are uniquely qualified to scrutinize such captivating material linking cultural thermodynamics in all its diverse manifestations. Whether it is called 'energy', 'life-force', 'power', 'energopower', or 'energopolitics', energy animates human interaction, galvanizes political disputes, and lies at the core of the cultural and semantic labor that drives human social action.
