Emotional Environments of Energy Extraction in Russia

Abstract

The association among extraction, emotion, and governance has received little attention in human and environmental geography and social science more generally. Extraction in authoritarian environments has long been studied regarding energy and extractive environments, with special attention to political ecological struggles and conflicts over rights and access to lands and critical resources. Yet little attention has been paid to how affect and emotions could shape the socioeconomic political and ecological aspects of extraction under authoritarian rule. Geographers have argued that emotions matter in making sense of place, politics, and environmental transformation for at least a decade, and it is now time to craft theoretical insights that examine emotional geographies of extraction, their politics, and their governance in ways that move toward deeper understanding of how affect and emotion are produced and mobilized in different kinds of extractive environments and under varying socioeconomic and political conditions. Thus, this article explores affect and emotion related to extractive environments in the Russian Federation with the aim of pushing emotional geographies—and extractive studies—forward in new, synergistic ways. Using discourse and content analysis, I explore the roles of affect and emotion in the production and reproduction of narratives about extraction in one post-Soviet and hybrid authoritarian-democratic regime. I argue that a tacitly endorsed, pervasive state emotional geography about extraction in an era of increasingly authoritarian rule acts to (re)create desire for continued pursuit of extraction by this energy superpower. Key Words: authoritarianism, extraction, hybrid regime, Russia, state emotion.