Eleventh International Conference on The Constructed Environment

Abstract

Bioregionalism has historically held a central position among regionalist strategies to avert ecological crisis. Tending toward technophobia, many bioregionalisms advocate relationships with biotic communities unmediated by technologies. Meanwhile, insofar as technologically-based regions are theorized, they typically refer to globalized trade zones explicitly antipathetic to bioregions. This constructed conflict between biotic and technologic regions frustrates regionalist efforts to carve out a role for technological transformation in addressing ecological crisis. Given that technologies are always present at local sites of human-ecological interaction, it is unimaginable that progress toward regional ecological resilience can be made without considering technological regions. In this work, I recuperate and develop the concept of the technoregion: a geographic unit defined by common use of a given technological infrastructure. I argue that technoregionalism is a key strategy for addressing ecological crisis precisely because these regions are able to be consciously shaped by humans. Specifically, technoregions can be decentralized and brought into fruitful engagements with human communities and local ecologies. Using insights from four years of ethnographic work studying energy infrastructure and wildfires in California, I take distributed energy resources as a case for considering how technoregional decentralization can enact positive change on four levels of analysis: (1) technological resilience, through decentralizing management of complex systems; (2) human subjective development, through reclaiming popular technological competence; (3) human-ecological relations, through decentralizing technological production to local levels; and (4) possibilities for insurrectional political change, through upsetting artificial, arbitrary, and stipulative politico-regions. These decentralist efforts construct improved relations among humans, ecologies, and technologies.