abstract:

In the 1970s, powerline protests erupted across rural communities in the United States. Just as a global movement of environmentalists, farmers, and activists fought expansive energy infrastructures, many rural Americans living in the transportation corridors of the electric-grid system directly confronted the political, social, and environmental costs of cheap electricity. This article revisits three well-known powerline protests in the United States—in western Minnesota, Appalachian Ohio, and upstate New York. It argues that rural protestors, by resisting capital-intensive technological growth in the countryside, proved highly receptive to the era's alternative technology movement. The protests show how the alternative technology movement and its democratic vision spread and transmuted within mainstream American culture. Rural communities, leery of large-scale corporate and government control, helped advance renewable energy politics and challenged the "utility consensus" of the American electric power industry. Grassroots revolts blended populist politics with global critiques to make environmental ethics agreeable to rural constituencies.

摘要：

在1970年代，电力线抗议活动在美国农村社区爆发。就像环保主义者，农民和激进主义者的全球运动与广阔的能源基础设施进行斗争一样，许多生活在电网系统运输走廊中的美国农村居民直接面对廉价电力的政治，社会和环境成本。本文回顾了在美国明尼苏达州西部，俄亥俄州的阿巴拉契亚州和纽约州北部发生的三起著名的电力线抗议活动。它认为，农村示威者通过抵制农村资本密集型技术的发展，被高度接受了该时代的替代技术运动。抗议活动显示了替代技术运动及其民主视野如何在美国主流文化中传播和改变。农村社区，大规模的公司和政府控制的谨慎态度，有助于推动可再生能源政治发展，并挑战了美国电力行业的“效用共识”。基层起义将民粹主义政治与全球批判融合在一起，以使环境伦理与农村选民相称。