ABSTRACT
Based on the most comprehensive anthropological study of renewable energy to date, this chapter charts the challenges and aspirations of wind park development in Oaxaca, México. The Isthmus of Tehuantepec is home to the densest concentration of on-shore wind power anywhere in the world. However, the wind’s forces are managed and channeled differently – sometimes paradoxically – in a setting where the value of wind has been fundamentally transformed from a quality of the local environment to a commodity to be sold. Based upon extensive interviews and interactions with local residents, indigenous communities, government officials, development bankers, renewable energy professionals, and journalists in Oaxaca, this chapter shows how wind ought to be taken solely as an elemental force, but one with ethical consequences. By turning to the “agential ethics” of wind, the chapter suggests ways in which humans, nonhumans, and forces mutually constitute social practices. The wind of the isthmus, like winds everywhere, thus cannot be reduced to their kinetic value to turn the blades of turbines, but rather should be interpreted through their multiple materializations, their cosmological worth, and their ability to shape the future ethics of the Anthropocene.
