Semester

Summer

Date of Graduation

2022

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Type

MA

College

Eberly College of Arts and Sciences

Department

Geology and Geography

Committee Chair

Jamie Shinn

Committee Co-Chair

Erin Brock Carlson

Committee Member

Erin Brock Carlson

Committee Member

Martina Angela Caretta

Abstract

Methane gas production has boomed across the United States as a result of the development of fracking technology and its associated infrastructures, including pipelines. This production has provoked resistance over a litany of environmental and social concerns at both global and local scales. These concerns are compounded by a history of extractive economies and degradation in the Marcellus shale region of Appalachia and the Ohio River Valley. To date, there has been limited research at the intersection of extractive industry and emotional geography, especially around pipelines. This research draws on feminist, emotional, and energy geographies and uses semi-structured interviews and body mapping focus groups to investigate the ways in which place-based identity, sense of place, and place attachment have been impacted by the oil and gas buildout, and how these impacts are emotionally embodied.

Participants in this research spoke to the ways in which pipelines, compressor stations, gas wells, and other fracked gas infrastructures have significantly impacted their relationships to their homes, communities, and selves. They described the physical and psychological impacts from the industrial buildout, including health impacts and emotional upheaval, which could feel inescapable and uncontrollable. Participants invoked concepts of energy landscapes and energy terrains to discuss multiple scales and sites of impact from industry buildout, and understood the linked geographies of the home, landscape, and self through embodied emotions.

These findings highlight that fracked gas infrastructures have the affectual, emotional capacity to disrupt place attachment and place identity for impacted residents, manifested through embodied emotions. This thesis addresses the conceptual gap at the intersection of energy and emotional geographies through a focus on the embodied experiences of the self, home, and landscape in relation to the oil and gas buildout in the Ohio River Valley. This thesis has broad implications for decision-making processes around extreme energy production through an illustration of the lived experiences of fenceline communities.

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