Oil & Gas “Clean-tech”, Blue-collar Workers, and Settler Sociotechnical Imaginaries

• In Event: Canadian Science = Settler Science - II

Abstract

In this paper I explore the coproduction of government-supported science aimed at “greening” the oil and gas sector and ongoing formations of settler-colonialism in Canada. Drawing on financial documents and analysis of federal innovation and climate change plans and policies, I detail government investments in research on oil and gas "clean-tech" both in terms of dollars spent and in terms of policy commitments made. I go on to relate these investments to the sociotechnical imaginaries on display when governments and pipeline companies are confronted with Indigenous refusals of their projects. I highlight the ways government investments in technoscientific innovation in oil and gas rely on the reproduction of a settler-colonial social order and vice versa. In particular, I examine the “blue-collar oil and gas worker” as both an imagined and a material actor whose needs and wants both require and justify Canada’s jurisdictional claims over unceded lands and whose continued existence requires investment in particular kinds of science and innovation. Ultimately, I argue that government investments in oil and gas research cannot be understood separately from processes that enroll “blue-collar oil and gas workers” into the work of reproducing settler-colonial dynamics. These processes of enrollment include the cultivation of settler attachment to place, the ritualistic retelling of stories about progress and innovation that cannot be separated from these attachments to place, and the cultivation of social identities associated with specific technoscientific infrastructures.

Author

• Alana Lajoie O'Malley, University of Ottawa