Kashubians versus Global Energy Companies: A Global-Local Encounter at the Heart of Poland's Shale Gas Revolution

Abstract

In 2011, Poland jumped into the ‘shale gas revolution’ with global energy companies and American geopolitical interests at its side. Poland's northern province of Pomerania, split into hundreds of shale gas exploration concessions, became known as the ‘United States of American Oil Companies’. This paper explores the global-local encounter between global energy companies and the Kashubians, an ethnic-group minority in Pomerania. It takes a multi-scalar approach to introduce the (inter) national discourses legitimating and challenging shale gas exploration as green energy policy. Then, it surveys Kashubians’ local discourses against shale gas exploration in their agrarian movement to protect ancient, ethnic lands, rural environments, agricultural livelihoods and private economic interests. A disconnect is demonstrated between the discourses on the global and local spheres of the debate. I conclude that global-local encounters are violent desecrations of the local when government institutions are too politically involved in the economic benefits of the global encroachment. Due to the failure of local representative democracy, the ‘local’ is forced to seek political networks across the spatial grid that may or may not help gain leverage in their local struggles. Lastly, postsocialist ethnographers are encouraged to link minority voices in Central and Eastern European States to the global debates.