Reviews
Caleb Wellum offers a fascinating account of the 1970s' energy crisis and how a wildly diverse set of actors—environmentalists, ecological economists, neoliberal ideologues, and more—all came to the same conclusion: leave energy to the market. Energizing Neoliberalism offers indispensable scholarship on a critical decade in energy and political history.
Erudite, entertaining, and surprising, Energizing Neoliberalism offers a razor-sharp history of the oil crisis and the role it played in accelerating a neoliberal politics that swapped out the old orthodoxies of resource scarcity and Keynesian planning for an untenable belief in unfettered oil futures, limitless resources, and the financialization of life.
Caleb Wellum's Energizing Neoliberalism is an important historical warning that energy crisis narratives carry political risk. Through the 1970s' discourse of oil crisis, neoliberals co-opted environmental anxieties. This book is indispensable for understanding the centrality of fossil fuel popular culture to the shift toward neoliberalism and the New Right.
Anyone interested in the current energy transition will want to read this compelling account of the last major crisis in our relation to fossil fuels. Wellum shows us how to think about a crisis of production and, equally, about the production of a crisis, illuminating the place of energy in our culture and politics.
Energizing Neoliberalism shows how tightly American culture and politics were intertwined with fossil fuel abundance and how anxieties about the nation's energy future helped generate market-oriented politics and culture. Wellum challenges readers to wrestle with how US 'petroculture' might be reimagined in the future.
Book Details
Acknowledgments
Introduction. Energy in Crisis
Chapter 1. "Is America Running Out of Gas?": Assembling the Energy Crisis
Chapter 2. "A Time to Choose": Interpreting the Energy Crisis
Chapter 3. "A Vibrant
Acknowledgments
Introduction. Energy in Crisis
Chapter 1. "Is America Running Out of Gas?": Assembling the Energy Crisis
Chapter 2. "A Time to Choose": Interpreting the Energy Crisis
Chapter 3. "A Vibrant National Preoccupation": The Energy Conservation Ethic and Market Forces
Chapter 4. "Put Your Foot on the Pedal": Contesting Conservation in Seventies Car Cinema
Chapter 5. "Markets Born of Shocks": NYMEX Oil Futures, Financialization, and Neoliberal Narratives
Epilogue. Enduring Crisis
Notes
Bibliography
Index