Energy and Society

05::September::2009 17:05 → permalink

Excellent resource which will allow me to trace both forwards and backwards in time on this particular worldview which, although the definition of energy is strictly based on contemporary physics and thermodynamics (of that time), it provides a valid and detailed approach to the issue.

(Not to mention that the copy I got from Newcastle University was “donated by the Newcastle District Committee of the Amalgamated Engineering Union.” Would for the survival of humanity that engineers take in the consequences of thermodynamics at all scales!)

Cottrell maps out in some detail the inter-relationships of technological (energy-usage) and the consequent/subsequent social change/evolution that occurs.

He does perhaps miss a point where he attaches the energy advantage of a rising mercantile-class in Europe in the 16-1700′s to the energy of sail. I would suggest that it was not the energy of sail, but the potential energy brought about by the technologies necessary to take advantage of this naturally-available store of energy (flows). That is, the social structure (organization of individuals) necessary to construct boats, the availability of the resources necessary for their proper construction — tall trees, steel tools (not merely iron) for working the wood, enough to build numerous boats to maintain a sufficient flow of trade (read: energy). And finally, of course, the existence of suitable natural resource reservoir, ultimately driven by the sun, wind.

He introduces the term high-energy technology which is essentially a set of technologies that have a high rate-of-return relative to the input (read: hydrocarbons, nuclear, large-scale hydro). In contrast with low-energy converters which would include plants and animals (as a food/energy converter for human consumption).

And he makes the deep connection between the energy regime (my word!) and the consequent social/institutional structure — recognizing the complexity of the deeply embedded relationship and the conditional and continual evolution and change of whatever social system is being examined. The power of this approach is in its ability to idiosyncratically unravel numerous geopolitical problems. (The imposition of one form of social institution developed in one energy regime on another regime that does not have the same energy/resource availabilities will often simply not work!). The energy regime would equate to the holistic natural system.

Factors he ascribes that affect the adoption (and optimized/maximized use of) available resources — technological, geographical, economic — are a mixed bag, and need to be treated separately in their relation to real energy flows. (p.53) Especially the economic factor — for it is here that the concept of energy is misused, or confused — as economics, in the contemporary sense, centers on the concept of exchanges of convertible value as mediated by money. Money as a socially abstracted representation of power (energy). And trade as an equalizing process — where energy-rich, concentrated resources are redistributed (possibly after going through numerous steps of further concentration). The equalization will, in the sense that terrestrial systems are dynamic, cause variable temporal and spatial re-distributions until the concentrated energy resource is no longer an energy asset that can be utilized by the social formation.

Energy and society : the relationship between energy, social change, and economic development, Cottrell, William Frederick, New York, McGraw-Hill, 1955.
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