Discursive Sequestration and Battles over the Meaning of “Fracking”

• In Event: 262 - Section on Science, Knowledge, and Technology Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 06.

Abstract

In this paper, I examine a tactic that supporters of fracking have employed to maintain fracking's safety: the strategic usage of a narrow technical definition of the word “fracking” to discount most of the problems with the drilling process as “unrelated to fracking” and thus make “fracking” appear to be safe. I conceptualize this tactic as a kind of discursive “sequestration” that artificially represents as isolated a process which, during the actual production of oil and/or gas, can only be carried out in association with myriad other processes. After discussing the implications this sequestration has on the visibility of problems surrounding fracking and the drilling process, I consider the efforts of drilling opponents to challenge this state of affairs by using their own, broader definition of the term “fracking.”

Author

• Robert Duffy, Rutgers University