From Peppers to Solar Panels: Imagination, Infrastructure, and Changing Identities in a Desert Agricultural Community

• In Event: Environmental Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 17: Community, Place, and Local Engagement

Abstract

In an era of climate change and accelerating transitions to renewable energy, agricultural regions are increasingly transformed as energy infrastructures emerge alongside—and at times in place of—farming. While a growing body of research examines the expansion of renewable energy, far less attention has been paid to how these transformations reshape local culture, agricultural identity, and meanings of place in the regions where they unfold. This paper addresses this gap by examining the implications of renewable energy development for agricultural identity and culture in the Arava, a desert region in southern Israel where intensive agriculture has long structured social life, spatial organization, and environmental relations.
Drawing on ethnographic research, the study traces how residents’ environmental–agricultural imagination historically shaped space and community, and how agricultural infrastructures evolved in response to political, ecological, and economic pressures. By integrating the concepts of environmental–agricultural imagination and agricultural infrastructure, the paper analyzes agriculture’s role in the production of place and identity, and shows how the introduction of solar energy is reconfiguring spatial, social, and cultural dynamics in an arid region.
Situated within sociological scholarship on climate change adaptation, renewable energy, and agriculture, the article offers a descriptive and analytical framework that links imaginaries and infrastructures. In doing so, it contributes to broader debates on the cultural transformations accompanying energy transitions in agricultural landscapes.

Author

• Liron Shani, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem