Andrew Brooks
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Andrew Brooks is a doctoral student at the CUNY Graduate Center, specializing in environmental anthropology. Brooks’ current LDPI research is part of his dissertation study on shifting conceptions of property in areas of shale gas development. Email：abrooks@gc.cuny.edu |
Research on Land-grabbing:
Fracturing Communities: Assessing local reactions to natural gas drilling in rural southwestern Pennsylvania
Rural southwestern Pennsylvania is currently experiencing unprecedented change to its physical environment and socio-economic relations due to an influx in natural gas drilling or `fracking' in the region. Beyond the dichotomous “anti/pro” fracking narrative perpetuated by mainstream media, this study provides a more nuanced examination of community reactions, resistance and alternatives to industrypractices in asking “how and where do people come to position themselves in relation to fracking?”Employing Actor-Network Theory (ANT) as an analytic framework, the study combines online archival research of involved organizations with semi-structured interviews of affected community members acrossthree southwestern counties. In evaluating the positions of groups and individuals, I consider howbenefits and impacts of the industry are coming to be distributed amongst local and often marginalizedpopulations. Early evidence suggests that even the most polarized individual opinions on the issue arearrived at through complex thought processes and expansive sets of criteria.
