Articulating Place: A Contradictory Coalition Against Offshore Wind on the Eastern Shore

• In Event: Environmental Sociology Section Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (60 minute): Table 16: Culture, Identity, and Environmental Meaning

Abstract

Transitioning away from fossil fuels requires the astonishingly rapid build-out of renewable energy and, in doing so, the transformation of economic geographies. But this wave of industrial restructuring is increasingly resisted across the country, supported by fossil-fuel funded denialist organizations and recently emboldened by the White House. On Maryland’s Eastern Shore, a protracted and acutely litigious conflict over developing an offshore wind (OSW) farm is underway, the stakes of which are billions of dollars, Maryland’s renewable energy targets, and ultimately the mitigation of climate change. While survey-based studies have previously catalogued and measured the many reasons coastal residents oppose offshore wind, this paper uses participant observation and in-depth, semi-structured interviews to answer a different question: how have OSW opponents stitched together such robust coalitions of people who oppose it for different, and every contradictory, reasons? And why are OSW proponents unsuccessful in doing the same? We argue that offshore wind opponents successfully created an internally contradictory yet functionally unified anti-offshore wind coalition by articulating diverse material interests and misinformation with an appeal to place loyalty. It is the latter, we will show, that provides the glue for a coalition that appeals to diverse interests and concerns, many of which are not reducible to misinformation. Theoretically, we expand upon existing research on place-based beliefs and attachments in the siting of renewable energy infrastructure by combining Stuart Hall’s theory of articulation with Doreen Massey’s theory of place. This work points towards the critical potential for ethnography to deepen our understanding of the politics of energy transition.

Authors

• Amienne Spencer-Blume, Johns Hopkins University

• Michael Levien, Johns Hopkins University