Toward a political geology of nuclear waste disposal: On stability and the deep pulse of an inert earth
DOKPE
- Emmenegger, Rony ORCID University of Fribourg
- 2025
Published in:
- Dialogues in Human Geography. - SAGE Publications. - 2025, vol. 15, no. 2, p. 332-335
English
Political geology offers a promising field for human geographers interested in the relationship between humans and the earth. As I already have discussed elsewhere (see Emmenegger 2024), Bobbette’s new book The Pulse of the Earth provides a fascinating account of the interplay between geology and politics in Java’s volcanic landscape since the late nineteenth century. Particularly valuable is Bobbette’s (2023: 8) proposal to use “political geology as a method” to account for the material dimension of earthly politics, taking into account both the geos and the geological knowledge of an eruptive earth. Such a method brings together
two often disconnected approaches to geopower – understood either in a Foucauldian sense as a form of geological knowledge used to govern the earth, or in a Deleuzian sense as the power of earthly forces (cf. Tola 2023: 564-565) – and reveals the two as less “mutually exclusive” than in dynamic interplay (Ibid.). Indeed, such an interplay seems obvious in Java, where earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, pyroclastic avalanches and tsunamis have shaped not only the landscape, but also epistemologies and knowledges of a dynamic earth. But how does this play out in places where the pulse of the earth is much deeper than at the eruptive margins of tectonic plates? In this contribution to the Book Forum, I want to explore what the method of political geology can offer to the study of the geological disposal of nuclear waste – a project that essentially relies on long-term geological stability
two often disconnected approaches to geopower – understood either in a Foucauldian sense as a form of geological knowledge used to govern the earth, or in a Deleuzian sense as the power of earthly forces (cf. Tola 2023: 564-565) – and reveals the two as less “mutually exclusive” than in dynamic interplay (Ibid.). Indeed, such an interplay seems obvious in Java, where earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, pyroclastic avalanches and tsunamis have shaped not only the landscape, but also epistemologies and knowledges of a dynamic earth. But how does this play out in places where the pulse of the earth is much deeper than at the eruptive margins of tectonic plates? In this contribution to the Book Forum, I want to explore what the method of political geology can offer to the study of the geological disposal of nuclear waste – a project that essentially relies on long-term geological stability
- Faculty
- Faculté des sciences et de médecine
- Department
- Département de Géosciences
- Language
-
- English
- Classification
- Earth sciences
- License
-
Rights reserved
- Open access status
- green
- Identifiers
-
- DOI 10.1177/20438206251345562
- ISSN 2043-8206
- Persistent URL
- https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/335382
Statistics
Document views: 12
File downloads:
- emmenegger_2025_politicalgeologyofnuclearwastedisposal_finaldraft-fiola: 18