Eric Verdeil defended his Habilitation à diriger des recherches (HDR) on November 23, 2015
Location: Lyon 3 University, Caillemer Room, 15 quai Claude Bernard, 69007 Lyon
Jury:
Lydia Coudroy de Lille (supervisor, Lyon 2 University)
Sylvy Jaglin (rapporteur, Paris Est University)
Franck Scherrer (rapporteur, Paris Est University)
Pierre Signoles (rapporteur, Paris Est University)
Mona Harb (examiner, American University of Beirut)
Ali Bennasr (examiner, University of Sfax)
This thesis proposes a theoretical framework derived from urban political ecology, as conceptualized in particular by Swyngedouw, to address the tensions and reconfigurations of urban energy circuits. In doing so, it pursues two objectives: to understand the changes affecting the relationship between cities and energy in the dual context of the neoliberal turn and the energy transition; to evaluate the contributions to urban studies and social sciences of an analysis of these issues based on cities in the Global South. The examples are mainly taken from Lebanon, Jordan, and Tunisia, as well as, secondarily, from other countries in the southern and eastern Mediterranean. The starting point for the argument is a critique and adjustment of the dominant conceptual frameworks in the study of urban services, highlighting the specific nature of the territorialities and materialities of energy circuits, in particular their transnational spatial extension and the fact that they link, across borders, circuits of different materials, thus exposing them to material and political vulnerabilities of a completely different nature than local urban services (water, sanitation, waste). The urban political ecology of urban energies is based on four points of entry: an analysis in terms of metabolism, i.e., coupling the circulation and transformation of materials, information, capital, and power; an analysis of energy landscapes, taking into account potentially conflicting representations that give value to designed, perceived, and practiced material spaces; an analysis of energy-territorial cycles, identifying temporalities corresponding to distinct territorialities in terms of scale and relationships between managing actors: one of the major hypotheses here is that of a rescaling of energy systems; a fourth entry is devoted to practices, understood here as opposed to policies, i.e., a bottom-up analysis of urban energies.
The first chapter analyzes the link between the control of energy circuits and the deployment of the state, based on a study of statistical data at the regional level and then at the level of a few countries, focusing on the case of electrification. Distinguishing between urban and rural electrification policies, it highlights the quantitative importance of state efforts and, using an approach based on biopower and governmentality, demonstrates their political rationale, which is to bring space and populations under control.
The second chapter highlights several factors that put pressure on these energy systems and lead to state overflow. These pressures are linked to a combination of very high demand and the associated need to expand these energy systems. This growth in demand, due to the emergence of new practices that relativize the urban/rural divide, subverts state control over the energy system. States are thus exposed to material failures, the consequences of which are all the more damaging as metabolic networks are intertwined, and to external dependencies that can destabilize national communities, both financially and politically.
The third chapter focuses on the case of three countries at war, Iraq, the Palestinian territories, and Lebanon, and shows the link between war and power cuts, which are both a consequence of the loss of state sovereignty and a military objective aimed at breaking the enemy's sovereignty over its territory or defending its own sovereignty. One of the major characteristics of the region is the emergence of sub-state energy sovereignties (Lebanon, Iraq).
The fourth chapter focuses on the logic behind the politicization of energy issues, examining a collection of cartoons. These reveal that energy crises raise fears of the disappearance of the state, but at the same time reveal, and even deepen, national divisions and discredit the political class. This politicization is largely played out and constructed spatially, through protests over inequalities in access to energy, as revealed by the Lebanese and Egyptian examples.
The fifth chapter focuses on the challenges of tariff reforms, highlighting how politically regulated tariffs go hand in hand with an unfair distribution of subsidies, in social and spatial terms, to the benefit of the middle and upper classes. However, attempts at reform to correct these inequalities have been met with vigorous popular protests, fueling the unrest and even revolts that have swept across Arab countries since 2011.
The sixth chapter presents neoliberal electricity policies, on the one hand by assessing the place of public-private arrangements in electricity governance and, on the other hand, by analyzing the link between these reforms of the management model and the new spatialities they bring about. While Jordan is seen as a model student of privatization, Tunisia illustrates a situation of more marked resistance, where neoliberalization is being introduced with the shift towards renewables. Lebanon represents a paradoxical case where the blocking of liberalization reforms is accompanied by a local consolidation of private actors active in the electricity sector.
The seventh chapter examines the introduction of new energy technologies in several cities in the southern Mediterranean and their complex coexistence, both in terms of urban policies and user practices. In particular, it analyzes plans to develop nuclear and renewable energy sectors in Jordan and the introduction of natural gas and solar heating systems in Tunisia, Istanbul, and Cairo.
The eighth and final chapter focuses on various popular alternative practices and examines the possibility of establishing alternative power through control of energy networks from within. It draws on the social movements of electricity workers in Lebanon, electricity fraud in Lebanon and Morocco, the development of electric generators in Lebanon, and the political regulations to which they give rise.