Maintaining Relations

Community-owned Hydropower Infrastructure through Time

This research project, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, analyses the experiences and knowledge of local communities that have been producing their own electricity for generations. We are investigating in the canton of Uri and in central Nicaragua how electricity production controlled by local communities endures, what roles topography and historically anchored social institutions play, and how innovation happens in mountain spaces.

On a theoretical level, the project combines research on energy infrastructures with anthropological interest in kinship and gender. Our first research objective is to explore how the maintenance of energy infrastructures converges with the creation and maintenance of the communities that emerge around them. Secondly, we address the role that kinship plays in the creation and maintenance of locally owned energy infrastructure.

By focusing on how communities, kinship, gender and electricity are produced together, this project contributes to current debates on energy justice and environmental sustainability.