2/20: fascism and fantasy - i never think anyone reads these blogs (inclusive of the paparazzi-ethnography.com), until of course, someone writes to me complaining that i speak too deliberately of intimate conversations. in such cases my project is histrionically characterized as entirely insincere and i find myself scrambling to make ammends. 

only few persons actually recognize that my entire outward experience is merely a palette for drawing attention to the fleeting phenomena that typically my informants rub out as insignificant (except for when it appears on a blog). the entirety of my skills of academic performance and accomplishments i honorably subsume under the rubric of these blogs (academic articles being a subterfuge of the political).

so i can only imagine what comes next after i suggest that last week's talk by robert socolow, co-director of carbon mitigation initiative, princeton university, drove me nuts. dr. socolow should stick to the science of climate change and not to the social, political and cultural aspects of its meaning. and this is not because he is wholly underqualified to render any sophisticated statement on such issues. who cares about that. what he cannot deal with, primarily, is that what he demands for mitigation does not require any conscious reflection on the scientific estate's own deliberately debilitating contribution to the conditions that have placed the globe in peril, from such things as nuclear warhead production to efficiency in the name of economic growth. capitalism is science rendered efficiently and profitably.

dr. socolow provided his commentary under the rubric of "truth". accordingly, "we" (whoever that is) all need to face up to the "truth" that climate change is real and that "we" need to make changes. okay, how about the entire scientific estate go on permanent sabbatical, from pharmaceutical, university and military laboratories as testament to this truth. why should "we" (whoever that is) adopt mitigation about a truth when the scientific estate continues to inform capital and politics on a whole range of devastating measures. 

i asked dr. socolow how he deals with the ethics that the very group of persons he demands that require change are the "average person" and "politician", when in fact, the scientific estate, a group regarded to be closest to such truths, continues to provide strategic advice as a military and capital resource. 

no response, or rather, in so many words, i was asking the wrong question. typical of my own perspective, what i found most distasteful was his command to have "younger" scholars actually stand to attention when asking their questions, whereas no such command was fielded to senior scientists in the room (all of whom he was on a first named basis).

1/26: yesterday, i gave a lecture to the anthropology department at u. tromso in arctic norway. it was a brown bag lunch talk actually, but i was quite happy for it, most of the faculty and grad students showed up. 

i surprised myself, how complicated, rigorous and funny i was in the hands of a group of anthropologists, after always delivering my material to multi disciplinary audiences. we had quite a discussion afterward and there were several points that i was able to recover and clarify. 

for example, one comment was on whether risks were for ever being triumphed over by profits and technocratic excellence, and even mentioned in the context of u. beck's risk society. and this triggered a new response from me, stating as i did, that while beck previously would regard risk as a shadow kingdom, a sort of coming to transparency of all the byproducts of capitalist production, the bads -- in fact, today, it is impossible to not ignore these baddies, and that what politicians can do, is merely place them side by side with the goods, although there are attempts to suggest we can still triumph over them.

i suggested also that unlike similar complex eco-systems in the south, such as the california river system of management, the aesthetics of northern management was based on a historically less sophisticated aesthetics of governance. and this is seen for example in the arctic frontiers high north conference organization itself where policy is on one side and science follows after. 

this would not happen in california. science is policy and policy is science and science and policy are citizen interests, as reflected in norgaard's fabulous piece on the california river system.

i suggested also that the overall proposals that i am developing, quite large at this point, had different kind of deliverables, and we went through a few examples in detail, such as the corporeality of consultant expertise...

1/21: i met with francis gugen at the lanesborough hotel at hyde park corner near buckingham palace. that was one of the best conversations i have had on my material. we began with a quick overview of the oil and gas situation globally, comparing it to renewables, which he invests in, but does not believe, given the enormous demands for hydrocarbons and the amount of energy they release, that renewables will be valued in the near or far future. i agreed with him on the issue of the btu output consumed by americans is enormous, and we both provided our own stockpile quotes of incredulous power availability by comparison to earlier times, with me giving my usual quote from vaclav smil. and for good measure, i complained that in the u.s. there is no war on consumption to which he replied that freedom of mobility is a first principle that would be hard to wean folks off of no matter what the propaganda suggests.

1/19: most of the trip so far, the ditties, i have placed on paparazzi-ethnography.com but here i will say a few things more academically. 

emma and i have had some engaging discussions about the production of knowledge, and on more than one occassion, especially this morning while taking the bus through downtown london, she pointed out how dismissive i can be when talking about non-academic work to which we had a good laugh. but it was instructive as i began to think about some of the fault lines in our discussion and mentioned to her, perhaps the difference between iied and my work or what i call academic work -- is the difference between reproduction of discourse and novelty. i produce novelty as my marketable product whereas knowledge houses like iied produce standardized productions, within definite niche settings.

and this brought us to the main critique i had, especially of universities, including where i was previously, that most of these houses are more interested in name recognition than they are in producing great ideas. 

to this emma was in agreement, all the so-called formats, type fonts, the policy briefings and broadcasts of promotions, all of the mature practices in place for producing, distributing, assembling --- all oriented toward the effort of increasing one's value in terms of name recognition. drives me nuts.

anyway, the conversation came about because last night -- we were putting together a talk for the arctic frontiers presentation in tromso. one of the things i insisted upon is to scrap all the bullet points that we wrote previously which drove me nuts. and instead, that we focus solely on what interests her (emma) -- in this case, how can speak simply about the word dialogue to the audience, and honestly (in the context of oil and gas development).

well, that seemed to work. she began talking about the difference between the desire to promote a concept of dialogue, and actual experiences she could think of where there was true dialogue (not many). we then went after a definition of dialogue, used by most folks, based on habermasian distinctions of concensus building. on this, the assumption that academics take issue with habermas -- that much like the definition of liberal economics, dialogue assumes that everyone in the room is a so-called enlightened reasoned subject. 

from there we began thinking about various categories of engagement that restrict dialogue, that are available to oil and gas engagement with northern communities.

the argument we took up was essentially that in liberal states, there is the requirement to make demands from the liberal state, and it has nothing to do with dialogue, but that claims making requires making demands. 

we back tracked to include clifford's use of creating new interests along new axes of common purpose -- essentially speaking last night and this morning on variations of enlightened reason claims making.

1/17: on the plane to london -- read j. godzimirsky’s pipelines and identities, current european debate on energy security, shtokman and negp case (2006), looking at the barents region developments to consider them in larger geo-political relief about eu trends toward russia. there’s quite a bit here on the so-called need for russia to have western expertise in developing the high north or off shore and lng deposits. i began wondering about typologies of required expertise in the literature, on shore (no); off-shore, lng (yes).  

read v. socor’s gazprom and the prospects of a gas cartel and europe’s energy security, written about 3 years ago. what a difference. he suggests we build pipelines to central asia and make friendly like with iran in order to curb russia’s thirst for power. as if that is going to happen. 

skimmed through papers for the watts book yessenova’s oil curse and golden's Nigeria – looks good. need to write formal reviews, but they look very good. 

reading indra overland’s piece on gas cartels, practically had a nervous breakdown trying to think about what to write for a book chapter due february, when it struck me that the title of my proposed piece  -- cartel consciousness and horizontal integration in energy industry -- could easily be about the rise of a natural gas cartel as discussed by various practioners these days. could be.

1/11: forms of simplication versus debris of events. my last several articles have been about simplication. and here now, finally, i deal with decasia and debris of events. this is a major theme of my book, how things are wafting from simplified presenations of complex systems and how information overload overwhelms actors in these systems.

1/10: i picked up my passport today, in sf and headed then over to mill valley to work in the library. i have been so slow to make arrangements for moscow. finally settled down to selecting a hotel, somewhere there in down town. 

1/9: completed my chapter for the mason/watts edited volume on oil and gas, called 'an events collective'. 

s. dovali and i were laughing, that after completing the barents 2020 application, i had to steer my attention to a new project, and this lapse of time between one project and the next creates a dizziness as if the concentration tap is turned off and all sound disappears. 

moreover, i did not want to begin this particular piece, or rather, i had written an alternative piece that i found easier to deal with. 

finally, i found my inspiration - to return to the original submission and within the space of 90 minutes, had fallen back on to the track of productivity and hobbyist. should be interesting to see the reception. i have posted it here on the manuscripts page.

1/8: e. wilson is placing my name along side hers on a collaborated policy briefing paper of iied. that was gracious of her to think of me as useful in that way, though my immediate inner response was to decline. i accepted because i respect her judgment. the issue, however, is how one wishes to draw attention to one's work. 

going to see n. poussenkova in moscow. we were able to put together, with s. saugestad in tromso a fabulous application for the barents 2020 and now just moving through a few minor points. i want to meet with nina p. to figure out how to work the budget. we have now two major proposals in hoping the shoe drops on either. looking forward to meeting her again. 

1/5: completed the invited proposal for the norwegian govt. barents 2020 initiative. the proposal moves through u. tromso. the research starts 2013-2015 and more of the nsf project.

1/2: new years resolutions... to complete my book. i began working on it in fall 2010 and then diverted my attention late winter 2011 to different projects, a few articles, nsf grant etc. -- refamiliarizing myself with writing in a way, through a blog, working with gina hiatt, and then several projects, the nsf grant, as well as several readings, that were instrumental at the beginning of last year.

one of the things i have been thinking about is actual data, what do people use. for example jasanoff's book, it is mainly case study of regulatory review and controversy in science policy, but there's no ethnography, no sense that the immediacy of the moment has power to transform meaning. 

this is something, i have to take seriously, the prospect that when i write about policy or energy development, that i am dealing with fleeting phenomena, or the underworld of empiricism, things that do not have any value as a sense making phenomena by other standards. 

speaking of which, the inferno, diaries titled, from an occult diary, by august strindberg. he seemed to me so accurate in terms of his closeness to capturing what is going on in his head, and the things he sees. that would be the model for an ethnography on fleeting phenomena.

1/1: finished reading gramsci, culture and anthropology by kate crehan. she does a great job comparing culture used by anthropology with its emphasis on system and modernity and tradition-- comparing it to the way gramsci uses culture, always thinking about the political forces in motion that shape the ideational character of a people. i sent her an email, asking about whether the camaroffs ever bothered to respond to her critique of their use of the word hegemony. she said no.

i am now reading shiela jasanoffs the fifth branch, which i have been meaning to read for some time, but just havent done so. i came across her latest article in the new oxford edition on climate change,  emphasizing the public role in funding science during the 20th century. so, i decided to come back to this book, which is on everyone's shelf.

there was another reason i wanted to take a look at it. in my article for the mason/watts edited volume, i was writing on the concept of an idea whose time has come, and suggesting that in policy writings, it has an explanatory power to gloss over all kinds of conflicts typically focused upon in the policy process. and i had written somewhat loosely about it. 

well, after i picked up her book, but havent really found anything of interest, there were passages that made me stop and begin working again on the article. in particular, for what ever reason, i began to think about the way in which latour's artefact/fact could be compared appropriately to the orders of discourse by foucault. 

in foucault's piece he makes explicit that discourse is fragile, and there is an anxiety about its disappearance, and this fragility is really quite similar to what latour discusses when a fact is contested and pulled back into the lab for further consolidation. anyway, i plan to make the comparison to stress in this context my choice of focusing on the discursive forms i am examining, and why discourse is still a worthwhile method of sorts.

12/15: purchased tx to london, oslo, tromso, moscow. in london, i want to spend time with iied, they do quite a bit of consulting work on environmental issues associated with oil and gas development around the globe. e. wilson works there and is part of the extraction working group. also was able to set up a few meetings with j.p. morgan, gugen consulting, and deutsche bank, all from connections this past year at the oslo energy forum. 

12/12: "epistemological scale jumping" -- alberto velazquez. it is a good phrase and alberto, phd graduate student in geography studying natural gas development at ucb was loaded with smart comments today as we poured over his upcoming qualifying exam bibliographies. what comes to mind is how so much has been written about energy and so little actually deals with a broad review of an analytics of power. certainly needs to be done, a typology of the dimensions of power (cartel, managerial, project oriented) that has come out of energy studies of the past century.

12/6: d. rogers (yale u) has a new publication accepted in american ethnologist that he gave last year at the aleksanteri conference in helsinki, which i attended and thought was great. i just received an advanced copy. i started working on several things at once, (a) a piece about shtokman, and its truths, i'm wondering how to characterize the different levels of truths about the field. how technical does one have to be in order to speak with authority? how close does one have to cite the facts to suggest there is a field of certain potential, that is, what are its dimensions as a black box of truth, no longer disputed; (b) e. wilson and the arctic frontiers conference paper for january in tromso, i just started pouring heavy molten lava on that and sent her a few pages, should be good for a few days; (c) skolkovo, if things go as planned, i want to head from norway to moscow around the 3rd of february to visit skolkovo, but i have to figure that out, d. calloway (ucb) was kind enough to send out an email on my behalf requesting a tour, since he knows a few folks from m-i-t who had scheduled a smart grids project there not too long ago. thanks d.; (d) cartel consciousness needs to be done for cultures of energy book, completed; (e) oof. now we get to the heavy lifting. my book. i have decided to work on a chapter i call --the events collective-- i was thinking about this piece for the watts/mason edited volume. i do not know. i have not looked at it in a while, but remember that the idea itself was quite tight, unusual....

12/5: p. wassman suggested i contact u. tromso for participation as social science mentor in the tromso, norway, week-long seminar after the arctic frontiers meeting in january. i went on that trip some years ago, down to lofoton, fabulous journey. 

12/3: skolkovo-- 

i've been thinking about visiting skolkovo, the russian government entreprenurial park near moscow which i heard so much about during my visit to the st. petersburg international economic forum. hello. i am sitting in the cafe, and i just bumped into a. yurchak (ucb) who suggested skolkovo requires examination within the context of spaces of innovation existing in petersburg and moscow.

12/1: completed this morning the nsf proposal after nearly 6 months work. m. stoilkova (u florida) had to do the budget, bless her heart, i will never forget her for figuring that out. now lets see what the reviewers say. c. jones (ucb wantraup fellow) did me an awesome favor by providing last minute comments. what a genius. i could not believe it really.

e. wilson of iied in london skyped with me over our co-presentation in tromso, norway, for the arctic frontiers conference in january. i suggested she draw on her global consulting to give us a picture of the steps global companies use to move into new regions, the kinds of unknowns they look for, their responses, etc. meanwhile an email circulated by f. stammler (arctic centre in rovaniemi) suggesting we have a meeting of the extractive industries group when we get to tromso.

looks like we are on board for a workshop in nyc for my book with m. watts. columbia u. gave the go ahead to bring together the 15 authors for a few days, scheduled for april. need to write my chapter. skyping on tues. with m. watts and h. appel to write out the invitation. 

and omg, i just spoke with a. kantenbacher, the dream interlocutor on the nsf. thank you a.k. for fixing everything. we need to get together to map out my long awaited manuscript and of course, set up times to work together on that throughout next year. that will be the goal for 2012.

11/28: after wednesday, im going to focus on merging sloterdjik's black empiricism with latour's quandary of the fact builder. there appears to be some cross over between the two approaches to the ethos of truth, which i want to apply to the discourse of shtokman offshore natural gas development.