Illuminant intersections: Gender politics of solar infrastructures

Keywords: solar, infrastructure, infrastructural violence, intersectionality, water, dispossession
Session Type: Virtual Paper
Day: Wednesday
Session Start / End Time: 4/7/2021 03:05 PM (Pacific Time (US & Canada)) - 4/7/2021 04:20 PM (Pacific Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 40

Abstract

Solar park development in India represents yet another frontier of capital accumulation under the auspices of climate change mitigation and rural electrification, producing new social frictions in the process. Enclosing agrarian spaces to harvest photons has occurred by dispossessing local peasants of land, rendering them a surplus population through the reconfiguration of labor geographies, and spatially dislocating resource-dependent women from harvesting firewood. The decarbonization of India’s electrical grid has put disproportionate burdens on marginalized populations, a trend particularly salient in the Gujarat Solar Park. However, it remains unclear how the vast infrastructures that sustain the Gujarat Solar Park will influence social power asymmetries at the local scale. For example, solar parks need periodic cleanings to function properly, requiring vast amounts of water. But dryland farmers from the region lack adequate water resources for irrigation and domestic purposes. Drawing on literature from feminist political ecology and critical infrastructure studies, this study investigates how the socio-material assemblage of water and electrical infrastructures of the Gujarat Solar Park unevenly distributes surreptitious burdens across differently positioned peasants. This study builds upon the conceptual frameworks of infrastructural violence and infrastructural intersectionality to illuminate the pernicious gender politics of India’s renewable energy transition, with implications for the food-energy-water nexus. Solar infrastructures, built to ostensibly amelioriate energy insecurity, may exacerbate water scarcity and pose additional threats to food security by grabbing arable land and denying marginalized smallholders engaged in food production near solar parks the water resources they need to feed themselves and the nation.