Jaume Franquesa, Power Struggles: Dignity, Value, and the
Renewable Energy Frontier in Spain (Indiana University Press, 2018).

Franquesa’s Power Struggles analyzes the political and social interactions that reinforce patterns of infrastructural exploitation in Southern Catalonia – a geography that has housed nuclear reactors, dams, oil refineries, and gas and electrical lines for decades. Franquesa argues that these sites of energy production are terrains of struggle for Catalonian “pagesos” (peasants) who wish to maintain “autogestió” (autonomy) despite the industrial development of their land. In order to disrupt the normative value relations that stem from state-implemented energy production strategies, Franquesa shows how pagesos’ assertion of dignity is generative in resisting state-implemented energy production. Ultimately, Power Struggles thoughtfully critiques how land users’ social relations are informed by and intertwined with the infrastructures and institutions that govern them. - HH