Abstract
What is electricity? Is it a natural force, a technology, or an infrastructural system? Is electricity a flow of electrons or an electromagnetic effect? Is it a liberating power or a silent killer? Is it even a thing that can be grasped? However we describe it, analyse it, or imagine it, electricity has been a defining force of modernisation for over a century, and its political, economic, and technical tentacles demand holistic, historiographic, and ethnographic attention. This chapter tracks the elusive nature of electricity through a myriad of incarnations, to glimpse the material effects and theoretical challenges posed by electricity. It looks at the ways that electricity has been conceptualised, materialised, and instrumentalised, by reviewing its ability to connect and disconnect things, people, and places. The particular kinds of relations that electricity generates provoke new questions about the concepts of relationality that have been discussed in recent anthropological debates.
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Notes
- 1.
The number of women taking electrical engineering degrees stubbornly remains far below those undertaking other kinds of engineering study.
- 2.
See https://snl.no/Alta-saken and http://kultur.nve.no/utstillinger/kampen-om-alta. Accessed 27 October 2020.
- 3.
http://lifeoffgrid.ca/off-grid-living-the-book/. Accessed 26 July 2019.
- 4.
Electricians in the UK must have access to the annual edition of British Standard BS7671 Wiring Requirements for Electrical Installations, for which an annual subscription currently costs between £69 and £406 plus VAT: https://electrical.theiet.org/resources/digital/digital-packages/. Accessed 29 July 2019. See also HSE 2015.
- 5.
It is fascinating to note that the switch was invented sometime after domestic lighting. At Cragside, said to be one of the first houses in the world—if not the first—to be electrified using hydroelectric power, in 1878, the table lamps pre-date toggle or button switches. www.nationaltrust.org.uk/cragside. Accessed 8 July 2021.
- 6.
See https://www.ukpowernetworks.co.uk/losses/. Accessed 8 July 2021.
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I would like to thank the editors and the anonymous reviewers for enormously helpful comments and suggestions.
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Abram, S. (2022). Electricity as a Field for Anthropological Theorising and Research. In: Bruun, M.H., et al. The Palgrave Handbook of the Anthropology of Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-7084-8_38
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