Solar Infrastructure and Ethical Subjects
"The German Research Foundation (DFG) has granted a new research project on “Life off the grid: the study of solar infrastructure and ethical subjects.”, which will be conducted by Dr. Eva Riedke.
The project will provide new insights about how solar off-grid products and technologies are being designed, built and sold to so-called “off grid populations” who live without or only in partial connection to any electrical grid. The project seeks to engage with solar start-ups, policy makers, philanthropically motivated engineers and tech entrepreneurs as well as – by ‘following the product’ – with those who distribute, purchase and use solar off-grid products in rural Kenya. The project hereby deliberately seeks to combine different fields of ethnographic study with one another, including the anthropology of energy, the anthropology of (development) politics and markets and the anthropology of ethics.“