Energy landscape as a political entity. Farmers practices around wind power in Northern Friesland
Résumé
Northern Friesland (NF) is a rural Kreis of Schleswig-Holstein at the frontier between Germany and Denmark on the coast of the North Sea. From the early 90’s until today, 800 windmills have been built among ‘wind citizen parks’ – Bürgerwindpark, which means they belong to Frisian people. This presentation aims at exploring the dimensions of this energy landscape by studying the emergence of a specific wind power governance, its connections to local culture and heritage and its resonance in other governance scales.
We approach energy landscapes through the lens of the uses and the sociotechnical collectives (Callon, Chouquer) as the construction of a taskscape (Ingold). Empirically, we follow the development of wind power projects by farmers and the adjustment of their agricultural activity and practices in this area; we also study the history of the wind power technology, its sociotechnical networks and its spatial diffusion between Denmark and Germany. We try to understand how transmission of know-how, technical choices, discourses and debates in the assembly of citizens associated in a Bürgerwindpark influence the perception and the construction of the Frisian energy landscape. This study is based on three fieldwork sessions (2014, 2015) within a Phd work, still ongoing.
We would like to discuss how cultural heritage are possibly updated in the energy projects, in terms of social organization, wield of power and spatial distribution, and by extension, how it may give new existence to the notion of Landscape as a polity used in the Jutland Region in the XVIth (Olwig). With this heritage in mind we should question the different collective dimensions in farmer’s solidarities around wind power (investment, technological appropriation, project extension and repowering, local development) and try to understand how decisions are discussed and made in this local and private assemblies parallel to public policy development at Land, national and European levels.
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