IBS Speaker Series: Angeline Marie Letourneau

Join in person at IBS 155 or via Zoom, email ibs-contact@colorado.edu for the password.
*Light lunch served at 11:45 a.m.

Title: Energy Identities: Work is Who We Are

Bio: Dr. Angeline Letourneau is the Hennebach Visiting Assistant Professor in Energy Transition and Society at the Colorado School of Mines. Her work examines the affective influence of identities under threat in the age of environmental and climate crisis and the contribution of these identity processes to widening cultural divisions and political polarization. Her experience working in industry and the non-profit landscape informs her attention to purposeful intervention and actionable outputs. Her work has been published in journals such as WIRES Climate Change, Environmental Politics, and Climatic Change.

Abstract: There are two primary explanations in social science literature for subgroup resistance to the energy transition: a desire to preserve one’s material wellbeing or identity defense. As this talk will discuss, effective solutions may emerge from understanding the interactions between material wellbeing and identity. Specifically, we must understand the ‘energy identities’ that form from the meaning workers find in their relationship to the market and the energy sources which sustain a growing economy. To explore the concept of “energy identities” I will draw on ethnographic and interview data from field research with two different groups: fossil fuel workers from Alberta, Canada and Indigenous miners from the Northwest Territories, Canada. I will demonstrate how the dynamic positionality of workers and their understandings of their role as workers shapes their perceptions of the energy transition. I conclude by offering suggestions for a labour-focused energy transition framework which recognizes the variation in energy identities.