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The fetish and other resource religious imaginaries

Submitted to Program Units
1: Energy, Extraction, and Religion Seminar

The term “fetish” originated in the 16th century when Portuguese merchants sought to describe the purported misvaluation of material goods by West African peoples they encountered on the Gold Coast. The fetish, then, has historically bound the religious with the economic, conjoining racialized ideas about value and sacrality with practices of exchange and ritual. Such religio-economic entanglements have often emerged in the context of colonial and imperial aims where justifications for resource extraction have produced and been produced by religious narratives. 

This panel features three papers that span geographic contexts, resource imaginaries, and extractive practices. However, they are joined in analyzing the imbrications of religious systems and colonial-imperial-economic power associated with energy and extractivism: a paper on the  “colonial myth” of clean energy, one on commodity fetishism and petroleum extractivism, and another on the history of Buddhist imperial power and gemstone mining in Southeast Asia. 

Judith Ellen Brunton, Harvard University, Presiding

Abstract for Online Program Book (maximum 150 words)

The term “fetish” originated in the 16th century when Portuguese merchants sought to describe the purported misvaluation of material goods by West African peoples they encountered on the Gold Coast. The fetish, then, has historically bound the religious with the economic, conjoining racialized ideas about value and sacrality with practices of exchange and ritual. Such religio-economic entanglements have often emerged in the context of colonial and imperial aims where justifications for resource extraction have produced and been produced by religious narratives. 

This panel features three papers that span geographic contexts, resource imaginaries, and extractive practices. However, they are joined in analyzing the imbrications of religious systems and colonial-imperial-economic power associated with energy and extractivism: a paper on the  “colonial myth” of clean energy, one on commodity fetishism and petroleum extractivism, and another on the history of Buddhist imperial power and gemstone mining in Southeast Asia. 

Papers

  • Evan Berry, Arizona State University

    Commodity Fetishism, Industrial Religion, and Fossil Fuel Extractivism

    Abstract

    This paper theorizes contemporary discourse about fossil fuel extractivism, arguing that various enculturated ideas about the social power of petroleum are used to legitimate and maintain unjust systems of resource exploitation. The argument is constructed in three parts. First, I discuss ‘commodity fetishism’ and the relationship between colonial systems of resource extractivism and the development of racialized classifications of religion. Second, I consider “industrial religion” as an interpretive frame for contemporary discourses that attribute supernatural powers fossil fuels. Third, I conjoin these two strands of analysis and conclude by suggesting some of the implications for environmental humanities scholarship on extractivism.

  • Alexandra Kaloyanides, University of North Carolina, Charlotte

    Burmese Gemstone Mining & Buddhist Exploitation

    Abstract

    This paper explores mining in Burma/Myanmar. With particular attention to the ruby and jade industries, this paper investigates the relationship between Burmese Buddhist imperialism and the exploitation of the environment and borderland communities. Myanmar has produced the world’s most valuable rubies, and Chinese courts have favored Burmese jade for centuries. These extraordinarily lucrative gemstones have ornamented powerful Burmese and Chinese ritual objects and enriched royal patrons of Buddhism. At the same time, mining practices have inflicted extreme harms on minoritized communities and non-human beings. This paper examines the ways that Buddhist authorities have justified mining violence in royal orders, public inscriptions, and ritual artifacts from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. It argues that these sources reveal a pattern of situating violence as a small demerit that is justified by a larger agenda of establishing Burma as the earth’s last remaining realm that protects the “pure” Buddhism (sasana).

  • Melissa Bendt, University of New Mexico

    The Colonial Myth of Clean Energy

    Abstract

    Pushes for “clean” energy have raised the price of uranium to a point where the energy industry is looking to reopen mines across the American west. Historically the same corporations that mine uranium also extract fossil fuels, making this one industry, not two separate entities, relying on fetishized science and technological solutions. I consider how “clean” energy operates to perpetuate colonialism, obfuscating that all energy is extracted from somewhere, and offering a promise of salvation from the impending existential catastrophe of global warming. To do this I examine popular culture representations of scientists in the show *Manhattan* which paints scientists as atheist gods (obfuscating that most religious institutions in Los Alamos were founded by the scientific community), contemporary news reports on climate change, and social media memes about “believing in science.”  I argue that the concept of “clean” energy, understood as a fetish offering salvation, erases continued energy colonialism.

Responding
J. Kameron Carter, University of California, Irvine

Business Meeting
Terra Schwerin Rowe, University of North Texas, Presiding
Audiovisual Requirements

Resources

LCD Projector and Screen
Play Audio from Laptop Computer
Podium microphone

Full Papers Available

No
Program Unit Options

Session Length

90 Minutes

Schedule Preference

Saturday, 5:00 PM - 6:30 PM

Tags

#extractivism
#energy cultures
#fetish
#resource
#imperialism
#colonialism
#renewable energy
#race
#energy justice
#energy humanities
Myanmar
Southeast Asia
Buddhism
extraction
#economic theology