Plets, G., Harrison, R., Dias, N. & Sterling, C. 2026. Dealing with Petrocultural Legacies and Histories Otherwise: Definitions and Directions for Cultural History and Heritage. In: J. Hung & W. Ruberg (eds.) Cultural History for a Changing World. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 49-66
DOI: 10.5040/9781350581418.ch-2
Extract
The planet is overheating, biodiversity is collapsing, and the sea levels are rising. Climate change and the need for a green transition away from fossil fuels are real. So why are we not collectively tackling the global environmental crisis by moving away from coal and petroleum faster and more decisively? Climate inaction is often framed as an economic and political stalemate. Yet, we argue that it is a temporal crisis and that deeply rooted cultural notions lie at the heart of it. To combine the words of Felix Guattari and Gregory Bateson, our ecological crisis is one of physical landscapes, economics, ideas and (subconscious) subjectivities. Similarly, our entanglement with fossil fuels and energy is not purely defined by hydrocarbons’ economics and physical characteristics. Coal, then oil, and finally, natural gas, have changed our engagement with and being in time. Not only have they influenced the speed of everyday life, but our normative conceptions of progress and development have also become encoded within them. Both deeply rooted memories and future imaginaries prescribe our engagement with fossil fuels and thus influence how societies move away from them (or do not)….
View the full book here: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/cultural-history-for-a-changing-world-9781350558854/
Colin Sterling 