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Solar infrastructures begin in the mine: legacies of colonial extraction and local governance of renewable energy in Morocco

Date:
-
Location:
191 Gatton
Speaker(s) / Presenter(s):
Geography Colloquium - Dr. Karen Rignall

What does it mean to be a company town? While popular imaginaries offer ready images of how company towns take shape under conventional extraction regimes like coal, these mining legacies also have implications for territorial governance under renewable energy regimes. This seminar examines colonial archives and contemporary dynamics around cobalt mining in the Moroccan desert to examine continuities in local governance dynamics between conventional extraction and renewable energy across time and space. I describe the daily political contestations over who is in control when both state and corporate authorities in mining and solar energy zones assign responsibility for local development to one another. Ambiguities over jurisdiction and authority highlight fundamental questions of sovereignty—who owns the sun as well as the sub-surface—raised by energy transition initiatives in marginalized rural spaces around the world.

About Dr. Karen Rignall

Karen RignallKaren Rignall is a cultural anthropologist and associate professor at the University of Kentucky. Her research examines just energy and economic transition in rural mountain zones, with a focus on agrarian change, rural politics, land rights, and natural resource governance in both North Africa and the central Appalachian region of the US. She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork and multi-disciplinary collaborations informed by economics, political ecology, and critical energy studies. Dr. Rignall is currently doing community-based research comparing the social dynamics of mining and renewable energy in Morocco; this work is transitioning into the establishment of a natural resource observatory in coalition with community members and civil society networks. Her work on energy and economic transition in the Appalachian US also addresses the legacy of mining for renewable energy transitions, supporting grassroots networks rooted in rural communities and their visions for vibrant, egalitarian futures.