The poor woman’s energy: Low-modernist solar technologies and international development, 1878–1966

IF 1.7 1区 历史学 Q1 HISTORY Journal of Global History Pub Date : 2023-04-04 DOI:10.1017/S1740022823000062
Elizabeth Chatterjee
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Abstract

Abstract Solar energy often appears a resource without a history, perpetually novel and promising futuristic abundance. This overlooks a long episode of ‘low-modernist’ solar research in and for the global South. Focusing especially on India and detouring through Mexico, two important arenas for early solar experimentation, this article traces an alternative history of solar technologies as austere everyday fixes for developing countries. In parallel with the well-known postcolonial focus on high-modernist energy mega-projects, the narrow transnational community of solar experts retained a competing tendency to think small. At its heart lay a dualistic conception of the modern energy economy: flexible and resource-intensive grid electricity for urban centres, inferior off-grid devices to meet the minimal and static needs of the rural poor. This impoverished, feminized Third World projected user base resulted in persistent underinvestment and failed commercialization, helping to explain why solar technologies did not take off earlier. While solar experts emphasized the regional exceptionalism of the arid tropics, the teleological linkage between modernity and ever-rising energy abundance was rejuvenated from below as rural communities began to imagine the high-energy good life as a universal aspiration.
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贫穷妇女的能源:低现代主义太阳能技术和国际发展,1878-1966
摘要太阳能往往是一种没有历史的资源,永远是新奇的,充满希望的未来资源。这忽略了全球南方长期以来的“低现代主义”太阳能研究。本文特别关注印度和墨西哥这两个早期太阳能实验的重要场所,追溯了太阳能技术作为发展中国家日常解决方案的替代历史。与众所周知的后殖民时代对高度现代主义能源大型项目的关注同时,太阳能专家的狭隘跨国群体保留了一种狭隘的竞争倾向。其核心是现代能源经济的二元概念:城市中心的灵活和资源密集型电网电力,满足农村穷人最低和静态需求的劣质离网设备。这种贫穷、女性化的第三世界预测用户群导致了持续的投资不足和商业化失败,这有助于解释为什么太阳能技术没有更早发展起来。虽然太阳能专家强调了干旱热带地区的区域例外论,但随着农村社区开始将高能量的美好生活想象为一种普遍的愿望,现代性与不断增加的能源丰度之间的目的论联系从下面重新焕发了活力。
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来源期刊
CiteScore
3.30
自引率
5.30%
发文量
28
期刊介绍: Journal of Global History addresses the main problems of global change over time, together with the diverse histories of globalization. It also examines counter-currents to globalization, including those that have structured other spatial units. The journal seeks to transcend the dichotomy between "the West and the rest", straddle traditional regional boundaries, relate material to cultural and political history, and overcome thematic fragmentation in historiography. The journal also acts as a forum for interdisciplinary conversations across a wide variety of social and natural sciences. Published for London School of Economics and Political Science
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