Enforcing Hopelessness: Complicity, Dependence, and Organizing in Frontline Oil and Gas Communities

Abstract

Abstract Fossil fuel companies hold enormous political, economic, and knowledge production power. Recently, industry operators have pivoted from pushing climate denialism to campaigns aimed at individualizing responsibility for climate crisis. In this paper, we focus on one related outcome of such efforts – people’s experiences of complicity – here in the context of unconventional oil and gas (UOG) production. We ask: How do mobilized activists experience fossil fuel scapegoating, and what does it mean for their goals as they organize against UOG production? We show that even activists fighting UOG production feel complicit in fossil fuel production, and these feelings of complicity diminish their demands for UOG accountability. We argue that these outcomes have been especially pernicious in cultural contexts like that of the United States, where neoliberal ideologies are normalized, centering personal responsibility, individualization, and identification as consumers rather than citizens. We marshal an extensive qualitative dataset and advance a theory of complicity as a way to understand: a) how social movements intersect with neoliberalized patterns of life; b) how experiences of complicity affect activism; and c) how this may contribute to fossil fuel firms’ goals of undercutting organizing. We end by examining how a sub-set of activists works to dismantle this complicity narrative.