Content uploaded by Alexander Dunlap
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Alexander Dunlap on Apr 21, 2020
Content may be subject to copyright.
1Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo,
Norway
Corresponding Author:
Alexander Dunlap, Centre for Development and the Environment,
University of Oslo, 0315 Oslo, Norway.
Email: alexander. dunlap@ sum. uio. no
Original Research Article
Human Geography
00(0) 1–18
© The Author(s) 2020
Article reuse guidelines:
sagepub. com/ journals- permissions
DOI: 10.1177/1942778620918041
journals. sagepub. com/ home/ hug
Bureaucratic land grabbing for
infrastructural colonization: renewable
energy, L’Amassada, and resistance in
southern France
Alexander Dunlap1
Abstract
Governments and corporations exclaim that “energy transition” to “renewable energy” is going to mitigate ecological ca-
tastrophe. French President Emmanuel Macron makes such declarations, but what is the reality of energy infrastructure
development? Examining the development of a distributional energy transformer substation in the village of Saint- Victor- et-
Melvieu, this article argues that “green” infrastructures are creating conflict and ecological degradation and are the material
expression of climate catastrophe. Since 1999, the Aveyron region of southern France has become a desirable area of the
so- called renewable energy development, triggering a proliferation of energy infrastructure, including a new transformer
substation in St. Victor. Corresponding with this spread of “green” infrastructure has been a 10- year resistance campaign
against the transformer. In December 2014, the campaign extended to building a protest site, and ZAD, in the place of the
transformer called L’Amassada. Drawing on critical agrarian studies, political ecology, and human geography literatures, the
article discusses the arrival process of the transformer, corrupt political behavior, misinformation, and the process of bu-
reaucratic land grabbing. This also documents repression against L’Amassada and their relationship with the Gilets Jaunes
“societies in movement.” Finally, the notion of infrastructural colonization is elaborated, demonstrating its relevance to un-
derstanding the onslaught of climate and ecological crisis.
Keywords
climate change, development, infrastructure colonization, land grabbing, renewable energy, resistance
El acaparamiento burocrático de tierras para la colonización infraestructural: energías
renovables, L'Amassada y resistencia en el sur de Francia
Resumen
Los gobiernos y las corporaciones exclaman que la "transición energética" a la "energía renovable" va a mitigar la catástrofe
ecológica. El presidente francés Emmanuel Macron hace tales declaraciones, pero ¿cuál es la realidad del desarrollo de la in-
fraestructura energética? Examinando el desarrollo de una subestación transformadora distribuidora de energía en el pueblo
de Saint- Victor- et- Melvieu, este artículo argumenta que las infraestructuras "verdes" están creando conflictos y degradación
ecológica y son la expresión material de catástrofe climática. Desde 1999, la región de Aveyron en el sur de Francia se ha
convertido en un área deseable del mentado desarrollo de energías renovables, que ha desencadenado una proliferación de
infraestructura energética, incluido una nueva subestación
transformadora en San Víctor. Debido a esta expansión de
la infraestructura "verde”, se ha dado una campaña de re-
sistencia de 10 años contra la subestación. En diciembre de
2014, la campaña se extendió a la construcción de un sitio
de protesta, y ZAD, en el lugar del transformador llamado
L’Amassada. Basándose en estudios agrarios críticos, ecología
política y literatura de geografía humana, el artículo analiza
Human Geography 00(0)
2
el proceso de llegada del transformador, el comportamiento
político corrupto, la información errónea y el proceso buro-
crático del acaparamiento de tierras. Esto también documenta
la represión contra L'Amassada y su relación con los Gilets
Jaunes, “sociedades en movimiento". Finalmente, se elabora la
noción de colonización infraestructural, lo que demuestra su
relevancia para comprender la embestida de la crisis climática
y ecológica.
Palabras clave
Cambio climático, desarrollo, colonización infraestructural, aca-
paramiento de tierras, energía renovable, resistencia
On November 15, 2017, at the Conference of the Parties
(COP) 23, the French President Emmanuel Macron outlined
“four priorities” for his battle plan to combat “climate
change” and usher in “environmental transition.”
First priority, to foster and to participate actively in the
nancing of all the interconnections we need between
Germany and France, and also between France with Ireland,
Benelux [Belgium- Netherlands- Luxembourg], Italy and
Portugal. These interconnections will guarantee better use of
renewable energy resources [and] … the acceleration in the
reduction of emissions of greenhouse gases.1
Macron continues by asserting a €3 price oor for CO2 in
Europe, trade policy meeting environmental commitments
and joint transnational research on energy storage to make
renewables a “non- intermittent” energy source.2 Implicit in
Macron’s speech is that “renewable energy,” market- based
mechanisms, transnational energy grids, and technological
development are essential weapons in his so- called “battle
plan” against climate change.
The neoliberal environmental policy mechanisms
espoused by Macron, including biofuels (Borras et al., 2010;
Hunsberger et al., 2017), tree plantations (González- Hidalgo
and Zografos, 2017; Overbeek et al., 2012), conservation
enclosures (Büscher et al., 2012; Dunlap and Sullivan, 2019),
and energy development schemes (Avila, 2018; Dunlap,
2019a; Franquesa, 2018; Siamanta, 2019), are spreading
conicts by grabbing land for “sustainable development”
projects. Environmental policy focus “should not only be on
the climatic events,” write Mirumachi et al. (2019: 8–9), “but
also on the interventions to deal with climate change, whether
for mitigation or adaption.” Examining the construction of
“green” energy infrastructure in southern France, this article
examines France’s environmental mitigation “battle plan”—
with its proposed transnational grid “interconnection”—
arguing that it will spread conict and socioecological
degradation.
The “green” infrastructure examined in this article is a
substation transformer, which is an interface that distributes,
transfers, and controls the ow of electrical grid networks.
Since 2009, politicians, administrators, and the service com-
pany Réseau de Transport d'Électricité (RTE)/Electricity
Transmission Network have planned to build a 400,000 V
energy transformer substation in the hamlet of Saint- Victor-
et- Melvieu, located close to Millau (Figure 1). RTE, as a
subsidiary of Électricité de France/Electricity of France
(EDF),3 has been developing the project without the knowl-
edge or the consent of the local population or the property
owners whose parcels overlap with the project site, like
Marie- Bénédicte Vernhet. Presenting her concern, she
explains:
When you see the advertisements on TV saying: “our energy
is green!” Is it “green?” We do not experience it as green be-
cause everywhere we see massive amounts of concrete com-
ing in for the wind turbines and this awful transformer that
is being built on top of the power lines and high voltage line
that we already have. We already had cancer in the village
around here. So what will it be like with a big transformer?
We feel like complete victims as well because the [old] may-
or and all of them [politicians] have decided rst that they
will allow these projects to settle here without asking us, let
alone telling us.4
Marie identies the presence of hypocrisy through infra-
structural materiality, illnesses caused by existing energy
infrastructure, and victimization of the hamlet’s inhabitants
Figure 1. Map of France, the Aveyron Department, and electrical
infrastructure. Source: Wiki Commons & RTE.
Dunlap 3
by politicians. In 2010, these factors propelled a legal cam-
paign against the transformer, or transfo as it is called locally.
Sustained direct action began in December 2014 with the
establishment of a protest site (Presidio) in the place of the
transformer: La Libre Commune de L’Amassada (Figure 2).
Since the imposition of the substation through claims of cli-
mate change mitigation and energy transition, a conict has
taken hold of the region.
Investigating the transformer, the theoretical and disci-
plinary inuences are extensive. Contributing to the political
ecology of the Global North (Brock and Dunlap, 2018;
Schroeder et al., 2006), this article argues that climate change
mitigation and energy transition are indeed a “battle” against
the environment. This “battle” on the ground, understood
broadly to include the human and nonhuman inhabitants
(Springer et al., forthcoming), is complex and remains cen-
tral to understanding the infrastructural development in
southern Aveyron. Focusing on the birth and early proces-
sual life of an energy transformer (Anand et al., 2018), this
article examines how energy infrastructure’s national, or
proclaimed ecological, “signicance” is used to justify land
grabbing and “prioritize some interests and scales over oth-
ers” (Bridge et al., 2018: 2; Huber, 2015). This includes side-
lining and politically constructing territorial struggles as
not- in- my- backyard (NIMBY) to defuse their extensive con-
cerns (Dunlap, 2019a; Lake, 1993). Infrastructural research
intersects with critical agrarian studies work on land grab-
bing (White et al., 2012), specically with renewed interests
in farmland grabbing in the European Union (Kay, 2016).
Oppositional residents describe infrastructural development
as “a type” of “new” “colonization” leading to the elabora-
tion and development of the term infrastructural
colonization.
Fieldwork in Aveyron was conducted between March
2018 and July 2019. Participant observation and semistruc-
tured and informal interviewing were employed on three vis-
its to the region, resulting in 32 semistructured recorded
interviews and over 25 informal interviews. There were 30
dierent people interviewed, including interviews conducted
with landowners, mayors, civil servants, and various land
defenders. The St. Victor Mayor, the concerned property’s
land owner, and select land defenders were interviewed
twice, in March– April 2018 and 2019. Secondary and pri-
mary resources were collected: newspaper articles, company
brochures, documentary lms, recorded consultation ses-
sions, and St. Victor town hall’s RTE archive. Most of the
names of the land defenders are anonymized, using cat-
related names to honor L’Amassada’s reoccurring cat theme.
The following section revisits critical agrarian studies
and political ecology literatures to discuss bureaucratic
land grabbing, territorialization, and infrastructural coloni-
zation. The second section begins by framing territorial
struggles in France and the precursors of L’Amassada. The
third section details the arrival process of the transformer,
corrupt political behavior, misinformation, and the process
of bureaucratic land grabbing. The fourth section docu-
ments the repression against L’Amassada, which includes
discussing their relationship with the Gilets Jaunes “societ-
ies in movement” (Zibechi, 2012). This leads, in the next
section, to developing the notion of infrastructural coloni-
zation and its relevance for understanding climate and eco-
logical crisis. The article concludes by asserting that
Macron’s “battle plan” is perversely targeting the environ-
ment by expanding and intensifying infrastructural coloni-
zation, which is the material expression of ecological and
climate catastrophe.
Figure 2. Free commune of L’Amassada: “No to the transformer.” Source: Benoît Sanchez.
Human Geography 00(0)
4
Infrastructural colonization: “large,
imposed, and useless” territorialization
Land grabbing is the control and capture of land and natural
resources. This involves resource transfers supported by var-
ious international, national, and local collaborations, which
necessitates various forms of “hard” coercion and “soft”
technologies of social pacication (Dunlap, 2019c). This
entails “utilizing a diversity of coercive and/or deceptive tac-
tics to achieve resource control” that are also essential to
ecological distribution conicts (Dunlap, 2017: 18).
Struggles over the distribution of land, natural resources, and
environmental burdens are considered ecological distribu-
tion conicts (Scheidel et al., 2018), which are fueled by cul-
tural and ontological disagreements. Arturo Escobar (2008:
14) recognizes culture as essential to ecological distribution
conicts as “economic crises are ecological crises are cul-
tural crises.” Mario Blaser (2013: 15) describes “political
ontology” as “whichever cultural perspective gains the upper
hand will determine the access to, use of and relation to ‘the
thing’ at stake.” Ontological and cultural relationships to
environments become central factors of environmental
conicts.
Green grabbing represents eco- ontological distribution
conicts carried out in the name of environmentalism or sus-
tainable development. Originally focused on the impact of
biodiversity conservation, ecotourism, and carbon sequestra-
tion (Corson et al., 2013; Fairhead et al., 2012), this term
also applies to the new resource valuations of hydro, wind,
and solar resources (Avila, 2018; Dunlap, 2017, 2019a;
Franquesa, 2018; Siamanta, 2017, 2019). This article
acknowledges the proliferation of (unsustainable) energy
infrastructure—high- voltage power lines, substations, con-
trol centers, smart technologies, and so on—justied in the
name of the so- called “renewable energy” or “fossil fuel+”
infrastructures (Dunlap, 2018d). Fossil fuel+ recognizes that
“renewable energy” necessitates hydrocarbons to extract
large quantities of minerals and hydrocarbons, to process
metals, manufacture various components (Hickel, 2019;
Sovacool et al., 2020; Zehner, 2012), as well as for its trans-
portation and operation of—the “+”—energy- harnessing
infrastructure: vital wind, solar, and water resources.
Land/green grabbing, however, does not “necessarily
imply that a transaction is illegal,” writes Sylvia Kay (2016:
4); “many controversial land deals may be ‘perfectly legal’
from a strict law enforcement perspective but considered
illegitimate.” Strict legal interpretation “misses the way in
which powerful actors can shape the law to their advantage”
(Kay, 2016: 4). Bureaucratic land grabbing highlights this
issue, observing processual acts of self- legitimizing, meth-
ods, and practices of democratic authoritarianism exercised
over land and people (Dunlap, 2019b). Bureaucratic land/
green grabbing emphasizes the procedural legitimization of
land theft and examines how unpopular and environmentally
destructive development projects are permitted, which could
be called the democratic conquest of nature. Conventional
energy infrastructures blur the line between land and green
grabbing and are frequently branded as “green” regardless of
various negative socioecological impacts (EC (European
Commission), 2018). Energy infrastructure often leads to
“land articialization” of smallholder farmland (Kay, 2016:
17), which in St. Victor is described as colonization.
Colonization politicizes the process of land territorializa-
tion. The territorialization literature details the intimate
sociopolitical practices of land control (Peluso and Lund,
2011) and exemplies continuity with the colonial process
(Lund, 2016, 2019). Temporal periodization, however, with
“colonial territorialization,” discursively separates continu-
ous processes of land control and degradation organized by
states and their economies (Rasmussen and Lund, 2018:
394). “Colonization,” as a term, implicitly politicizes and
takes a position against the colonial model or the state
(Dunlap, 2018c, 2019a). The state is a highly developed
(computational) evolution of the colonial model (Dunlap and
Jakobsen, 2020; Gelderloos, 2017). Understanding the state
this way can relate to Indigenous struggles for self-
determination and autonomy; their rejection of state legiti-
macy; its modes of political organization and corresponding
methods of extractivism (Churchill, 2003; Dunlap, 2018c),
which extends to dissident non- Indigenous people. Individual
self- identication with state- building, nationalist mythology,
governmental sociocultural engineering, and resource
extraction become central issues (Dunlap, 2018c, 2019c;
Dunlap and Jakobsen, 2020). The state organizes the frame-
work of public–private development, while infrastructural
development is the material manifestation of the colonial/
statist project (Anand et al., 2018; Bridge et al., 2018;
Murrey, 2020). Industrial infrastructures replicate colonial/
statist sociocultural values in the local. In northwest Italy, the
NoTAV movement confronted an infrastructural knowledge/
power regime—a high- speed train (TAV)—that was referred
to as an “infrastructural dispositif” (Leonardi, 2013: 35).
This is the statist and market- oriented material, social, and
political apparatus as well as its corresponding ideological
dogma embodied within infrastructures, expressed in the
equation: “infrastructure = modernization = economic
growth” (Leonardi, 2013). Infrastructure development,
regardless of popular contestation, is always positioned as
the “higher” or national good (Bridge et al., 2018; Huber,
2015). Infrastructures, then, are desired for various—real
and imagined—reasons (Anand et al., 2018; Dalakoglou and
Harvey, 2012), which is where power resides and conicts
complicate.
While neglecting various analytical “ruptures” (Lund,
2016), colonization discursively challenges the organiza-
tional and structural violence associated with infrastructural
development. Colonial processes are viewed without tempo-
ral or spatial boundaries and are marked by socioecologi-
cally degrading actions by various actors and sociopolitical
regimes. This perspective draws continuity between
Dunlap 5
infrastructures and political regimes, recognizing an infra-
structural “colonial present” both north and south of the
globe. This framing decenters the industrial and infrastruc-
tural dogma normalized into everyday life, which also
extends in academic habitus and research. The next section
turns to the history of political struggle in the Aveyron
region.
Aveyron and territorial struggle in France
Aveyron is a county within the Occitanie region of southern
France. This rural area has been historically “suspicious” of
foreigners and regarded as “backwards” by government
bureaucrats (Weber, 1976: 44–45). It consists geographically
of forest- covered rocky hills, interspersed with lively streams
and the Tarn River. Known for its inhospitable environmen-
tal conditions, this region was exclusively on an agrarian
subsistence economy (MTC, 2019; Weber, 1976), which
continues today, although its economic activities have now
diversied into tourism, slaughterhouses, and artisanal crafts
and service industries. Aveyron is France’s largest producer
of sheep, where dairy products and beef account for 40% of
the agricultural market.5 It is also home to the world-
renowned Roquefort cheese, which is an essential source of
employment in the region. Its energy production has relied
primarily on hydroelectric resources. Since 1999, it has
become a desirable location for wind energy development
(Nadaï and Labussière, 2009). Since then, as Nadaï and
Labussière (2009: 747) tell us, “there has been a growing
opposition to wind power” that has only intensied over
time. However, determined political struggles in the region
are rooted in a much longer history, which in recent times we
can trace to the Larzac military base in southern Aveyron.
On October 28, 1971, French Defense Minister Michel
Debré announced its expansion by 14,000 hectares (Terral,
2011). This project threatened the expropriation of sheep
grazing land—many associated with Roquefort industries—
and triggered what would become a 10- year transnational
antimilitarism campaign on the Larzac Plateau. People
migrated from all over France to support the struggle as it
became a site of international solidarity, serving as a precur-
sor to the process of transnational “summit hopping” associ-
ated with the antiglobalization movement (Sullivan, 2005).
The ZAD (Zone- to- Defend) movement inherited and
advanced Larzac’s legacy (Quadruppani, 2018; Vidalou,
2017). The Larzac struggle had two important inuential
aspects. The rst is the migratory and circulating transna-
tional solidarity networks of resistance, among them anti-
mining and airport struggles in New Caledonia and Japan
(Terral, 2011), respectively. The inux of people coming
from outside of the region inuenced local farmers to become
“open- minded and ready to contribute to wider struggles”
(Gildea and Tompkins, 2015: 582). An important observa-
tion, Gildea and Tompkins (2015: 584) note, was that the
“success of the Larzac campaign depended on the sheep
farmers co- operating with outsiders who had more organiza-
tional power and experience.”
The second was the employment of the term “internal col-
onization” to describe the military base expansion. The
1960s’ revolutionary fervor, especially of the Maoist and
Marxist- Leninist types, was heavily inuenced by anticolo-
nial struggles. Revolutionary solidarity led to identifying not
only common enemies, but also common politicospatial
dynamics. This came in the form of realizing that “peripheral
parts of Europe were also being ‘colonized’ by more
advanced industrial regions in the core of the European
Community” (Gildea and Tompkins, 2015: 589). Investments
were pouring into industrial and urban areas, meanwhile the
countryside—in many instances—were being depopulated,
pillaged, and used as the playground for foreign bureaucrats
and politicians (Gildea and Tompkins, 2015). The term inter-
nal colonization then came to highlight dynamics taking
place between cities and the countryside. Local folklore, lan-
guage, and culture of Occitanism was historically assimi-
lated and suppressed by French state building (MTC, 2019;
Vidalou, 2017), which now is recognized as an important
language.
In French, the term ZAD originally stands for “deferred
development area” (zone d'aménagement différé). This sig-
nied the demarcation and reservation of land for a develop-
ment project. The rst recognized ZAD was in
Notre- Dame- des- Landes. In the mid- 2000s, a 1970’s airport
plan began to be implemented, resulting in various segments
of the population organizing to thwart the displacement and
defend the farmlands of local landowners. People refused to
leave and began converting the “deferred development area”
into a “zone- to- defend” (zone à defendre) (MTC, 2018
[2016]). Refusing displacement and land transformation,
people not only sought to resist the airport construction, but
initiated a pregurative collective autonomous project of
ecological protection and food autonomy (MTC, 2018
[2016]). It was not just about the airport, but as the slogan
goes: “Against an Airport & its World,” a world predicated
on capitalist relationships and destructive ecological prac-
tices. The Notre- Dame- des- Landes ZAD lived through mul-
tiple police–military occupations and demolitions and, now,
has succeeded in terminating the airport project in 2017
(Anonymous, 2019). The ZAD concept simultaneously
spread, igniting a movement of autonomous land projects
blocking development projects, that Le Monde (2015)
claimed totaled 27 in France. ZADs were formed to ght
high- tension wires, highways, dams (Sivens), nuclear waste
dumps (Bure), ecotourism (Roybon), and more (Quadruppani,
2018). While resistance movements like the ones in Larzac
and Plogo remain important inspirations, the Zapatista
struggle in Chiapas was also a foundational inuence.6 From
the Narritia antiairport struggle in Japan7 (1960s) to Álvaro
Obregón/Gui’Xhi’Ro’s struggle against wind parks in
Mexico (Dunlap, 2018b), the ZAD concept has a profound
Human Geography 00(0)
6
anity with generational territorial struggles across the
world. L’Amassada’s antitransformer struggle falls within
this constellation of autonomous land defense collectives.
The transformer: corruption, land
grabbing, and consultations
The small hamlet of St. Victor- et- Melvieu, with a population
just under 400 people (INSEE, 2016), was engulfed in a
political crisis. “I was a municipal councilor in 2007 and in
2010,” explains Carole, “the mayor told us in a meeting
about a small solar project on the hill.” She and the other 10
town councilors voted against and denied the project, yet
“afterwards the city published a meeting report for council-
ors…, announcing: ‘We refused the construction of a solar
panel park as a way not to disturb the future construction of
a transformer.’” Carole was shocked. The mayor “did not ask
for our view on the matter and did not show us any les or
reports mentioning this project.” Carole, and another mem-
ber of the town council, called a meeting with Daniel
Frayssinhes—the St. Victor mayor from 2008 to 2014—and
“he refused and didn’t want to share information with the
inhabitants.” Only 3 of the 11 town councilors were ocially
against the transformer because, according to Carole, they
“didn’t want to contradict the mayor or conrm that he was
wrong in his actions” because they “might also receive some
benets for their loyalty, like getting construction permits
easily.” Carole confronted Frayssinhes and asked “why he
was hiding this from us and he answered that the director of
RTE told the mayor to keep quiet about it because otherwise
there would be protest from the inhabitants. He was honest
about it.”8 By signing a contract with RTE, Frayssinhes had
“violated procedures.”9 Private transformer agreements took
place between friends, among them Senator Alain Marc and
local industrialists, in and outside the town council.
The denied solar project would have had the same loca-
tion as the transformer. The father of Marie—the land-
owner—was the mayor of St. Victor for 18 years, during
which Frayssinhes was his protégé. Marie’s father was sick
with cancer when he heard the news and was infuriated. The
contract was signed, discord fermented, and Marie’s father
would pass away within 12 months. The Vernhet family’s
land was chosen, according to RTE (2017: 1), for strategic
reasons: “the 400,000 and 225,000 volt networks intersect in
one place: at Saint- Victor- et- Melvieu. It is the best place to
link the two networks by a new ‘interchange.’” Moreover,
“[t]he substation is a strategic node for locally redistributing
energy from national lines” (emphasis added). RTE (2019),
at the same time, on the same webpage, writes:
By 2030, 40% of our electricity will have to be renewable.
Wind, solar, geothermal or methanation are all new energies
to connect to electricity networks. Occitanie has all the assets
to become one of the leading regions in terms of production
from renewable energies.
As a result, RE production is expected to be around 3,000
MW. The 225,000- volt electricity transmission system in
Aveyron, Tarn and Hérault will have to be able to accom-
modate this additional production and transport it to major
consumption centers.
Local here then comes to mean Occitanie region, which
comprises 13 departments, including Toulouse and
Montpellier (Delga, 2017). The “strategic node” and “local”
renewable energy development are the main justications for
the transformer.
St. Victor’s current mayor Jean Capel asserts:
The persons who are in favor of this project all agree to build
it near St. Victor and embrace the project, but they refused it
in the rst place to locate the construction on their grounds.
And this makes me think that there is a great deal of passive
corruption concerning the transformer.10
RTE strategic node is positioned on the border with
another district; meanwhile Melvieu residents (living near
the existing transformer) pressured politicians to place the
transformer in St. Victor. It also relates to tax income dis-
putes and political maneuvering with the idea of “the
Community of Communes.” St. Victor is a wealthy village
with 13 dierent power lines, a hundred pylons, and 2 major
infrastructures (substation and dam) that annually aords its
payments of roughly €500,000 from hydrological resources
and €100,000 from electrical infrastructures.11 Senator Alain
Marc created the Community of Communes, to organize ve
nearby villages into one administrative organization, in order
to “alleviate the nancial constraints of the poor villages.”
People contend, however, that this served Marc’s political
ambitions as the Community of Communes was a tax redis-
tribution scheme that could gain “the support of some may-
ors.”12 After January 2018 a “unique taxation” scheme
emerged, organizing village revenues into the Community of
Communes’ fund, which managed an unfavorable redistribu-
tion system for St. Victor, leading them to withdraw from the
organization.13 NIMBY concerns, the redrawing of tax lines,
and territorial jurisdictions were also embedded political fac-
tors that played into the transformer placement.
The fact that the elected representatives withheld infor-
mation and approved the transformer without a public con-
sultation provoked generalized outrage. Carole and others
began organizing “a petition in 2010 against the project and
it turned out that 80% of the villagers were against” the
transformer.14 After the petition, the civil society group
Plateau Survolté (Overvolted Plateau) was formed. Having
an association enabled them to le lawsuits against compa-
nies, initiating a self- funded information and legal campaign
against RTE. By 2013 the legal campaign was becoming
dismal.
Dunlap 7
Opposition and legalized expropriation
The legal avenue of protest proved to be restrictive. Not only
were private energy developers supportive of the project, but
so were senators and local mayors. By 2006 there were
already 246 wind turbines and 53 construction permits
granted in Aveyron (Nadaï and Labussière, 2009).
Documenting the governance framework for renewable
energy in Aveyron, Nadaï and Labussière (2009: 752)
observe “wind power planning became more open to devel-
opers than to other parties.” The “institutionalization of rev-
enue sharing with local communities through taxes,” Nadaï
and Labussière (2009: 752) assert, “has undermined the
power of local opposition” in favor of wind developers and
politically ambitious politicians.
While Plateau Survolté was spreading information and
organizing legal defense, the ZAD struggle in France was
gaining momentum. The struggle in Notre- Dame- des-
Landes was intensifying, while outside Toulouse, in Sivens,
another ZAD emerged to block a dam project. The Sivens
struggle was violently repressed and led to the murder of
21- year- old Rémi Fraisse by “ash ball” stun grenade in
October 2014 (Quadruppani, 2018).15 Some people from
neighboring towns, like St. Arique and Camarès, “began
going to the weekly or monthly meetings” in St. Victor and
they said: “Wow, this is great what you are doing, but maybe
at some moment we need to occupy the land where the trans-
former is going to be built.” Almost everybody agreed.16
They began organizing themselves with Plateau Survolté
and members of the Vernhet family: “We talked with them
and thought about building an occupation site on their land,
where the transformer is supposed to be. Then three months
later we launched this project”—L’Amassada, which means
“assembly” in Occitanie.17 The construction of a communal
house began in December 2014 on an exposed and windy
hilltop and within 3 months the rst structure of L’Amassada
had sprouted. L’Amassada began as a presidio (protest site).
The term presidio comes from the NoTAV movement
(Leonardi, 2013; MTC (2018 [2016]) and signies a com-
mon space for events, discussions, and organizational activi-
ties. L’Amassada’s construction was not appreciated by RTE
and led to a law suit against Marie’s aunt. Initially
L’Amassada served as a common space for meetings, events,
and “artisanal” workshops. Nemesh remembers L’Amassada
as a space with “sometimes just boring meetings every
Saturday that” were “really cold and you are suering,” but
at the same time “you are really proud.”18 By 2018,
L’Amassada expanded to three building structures with a
kitchen space, a cobb dorm room, and a meeting hall, with
caravans, dry toilets, a solar shower, a greenhouse, gardens
that used a phytopurication system, chickens, cats, and a
microscale artisanal wind turbine (Figure 2).
Plateau Survolté and L’Amassada underline the three
principal problems of the transformer project: rst, land
grabbing and the intensication of energy infrastructure in
St. Victor; second, the transformer will enable an increase in
the wind, solar, and biomass colonization of Aveyron, in
order to become “energy positive” (Delga, 2017); and third,
its energy use. The transformer, they argue, will not serve for
local use but for distant large cities, which includes forming
an energy corridor or “highway” between North Africa and
the EU (Trieb et al., 2016). Overall, there is a complete and
utter disbelief in the discourse of “energy transition” as a
solution to ecological catastrophe. The transformer and wind
parks were nothing more than a capitalist accumulation strat-
egy “hiding behind a green camouage.”19 Jerry Cat
explained, “rather than a transition, wind energy is an accu-
mulation of more growth.”20 Jean- Baptiste Vidalou recog-
nizes a political- security strategy associated with “ecological
transition,” contending:
The economy wants to keep moving, it does not want dis-
order and the green economy is just there to put some oil
into the global capitalist machine—to put more oil into the
machines so it could be more uid.21
Plateau Survolté and L’Amassada proved to be an obsta-
cle to RTE and energy companies in the region.22 RTE (2019)
contends that they conducted “200 meetings and eld meet-
ings.” Although the location and participatory quality of
these 200 meetings remain unknown, many meetings were
attended by supporters of L’Amassada. The documentary
Pas Res Nos Arresta (2018)23 covers the direct actions and
manifestations, many of which intended to disrupt meetings
associated with transformer development. The Climate
Energy Project Manager of the Regional Park (Parc naturel
régional des Grands Causses), Alexandre Chevillon, remem-
bers an intervention in 2017: “The protestors arrived from St
Victor and occupied the building, insulted everybody and
broke some materials. They refused to speak and debate, and
opted for anti- democratic methods and values.”24 The claim
to democracy is reoccurring among ocials associated with
the transformer and wind energy development. While RTE
sued Marie’s 68- year- old aunt, she was intimidated and
interrogated by police. This induced fear and stress, provok-
ing her to transfer the land ocially to Marie in 2015. RTE
approached Marie’s aunt twice, then ever since RTE never
contacted Marie:
Since I have been the owner I have never met RTE. They
have never been in touch with me and they sent me a letter
that said: “As there is no agreement between you and us, you
will be the object of expropriation.”25
As Marie’s aunt was on trial and a judicial back- and- forth
proceeded, the Vernhet family along with L’Amassada
devised a strategy of parceling out her land to 132 dierent
people to complicate legal land acquisition.
While the trial against her aunt would last until Spring
2019, RTE led a déclaration d'utilité publique (Public
Human Geography 00(0)
8
Utility Declaration) in 2017. The civil code, article 545,
states that the Public Utility Declaration is “the state sanc-
tioned procedure of land expropriation for reasons of public
utility and with just and prior compensation” (Française,
2018). The procedure begins with a Public Utility Inquiry
(DUP) that determines the “public good” or “national inter-
est” being served by the expropriation, which is followed by
surveying and appraising the land, before a judicial phase of
ownership transferability is initiated (Française, 2018). On
June 13, 2018, a Public Utility Declaration was declared by
Nicolas Hulot, then minister of Ecological and Solidarity
Transition.26 Marie remembers, “in the summer, in July, we
got a letter saying that our lands were expropriated as the
Public Utility Inquiry approved it.”27 “Yet, everybody knew
that it would be ‘yes,’” explains Marie, the Public Utility
Inquiry “is never refused—never.”28 Energy transition and
climate change mitigation form a strong justication for land
expropriation, which ordered permanent land acquisition
from two families that were rejecting the project: the Vernhet
and Montade families. Both resisted the process until the
police invasion. The Vernhet family had 28,311 m2 (2.83
hectares) of land expropriated while the Montade family had
16,970 m2 (1.7 hectares). This also includes land leasing for
4 years from six property owners, among them the Montade
and Vernhet families.
During the DUP judicial phase, the state had to establish
“just and prior compensation.” After notications by RTE’s
land appraisers and lawyer to St. Victor,29 an expropriation
judge came to town. The Vernhet family and L’Amassada
organized a “people’s tribunal,” invited the media, and put
the judge on trial publicly (Lundimatin, 2018).30 Both Marie
and the judge made statements as an Amassada participant
acted as the presiding judge. Marie made a statement, part of
which included: “There was not a price given to this land, we
gave it the value of our ght and this you cannot take. You
can put a price on the land, but you can never take the value
of it.”31 The judge, having little control over the way the
events were unfolding, eventually left. A letter would estab-
lish the price of Vernhet’s land at €18,000, 20% higher than
market value. Marie’s husband calculated that €18,000 is
equivalent to 3 years of harvest and production (of straw,
wheat, and milk).32 The process of land expropriation was
rejected and subverted at every turn by the landowners and
L’Amassada, but the bureaucratic procedure continued. The
presidio became a zone- to- defend, with barricades erected,
during the summer of 2018 (Figure 3). The Public Utility
Declaration is a central mechanism of bureaucratic land
grabbing serving infrastructural colonization.
Consultations, transition, and misinformation
Police invasion and expropriation was looming, meanwhile
energy transition and energy development were being pro-
moted during the consultations of southern Aveyron’s
“Climate Plan” hosted by the Regional Park (ADN (Aveyron
Digital News), 2019). “The Aveyron public inquiries,” that
happened a decade earlier, “proved to be only marginal land-
scape adjusters because of their late position in the [develop-
ment] process and the weight given to public interest and
rational argument” (Nadaï and Labussière, 2009: 751). Since
2010, concerned citizens and L’Amassada participants have
been attending meetings and consultations, accusing them of
denying the impacts of renewable energy transition, which
entails ignoring the structural concerns raised by partici-
pants, neglecting resource extraction supply chains, propos-
ing inadequate measures, and intensifying socioecological
problems by “green washing” regional industry. Between the
years 2015 and 2018, L’Amassada organized to shut down
RTE and Regional Park events with physical disruption and
blockade techniques. De- escalating their interventions in
2018, their consultation participation could be described as
more “respectful interventions,” with an emphasis on
dialogue.
The May 25, 2018, consultation serves as an example of a
respectful intervention. Consultation meetings are usually
advertised through newspapers and Persistent Kitty remem-
bers going to the St. Arique city hall and how “two Le Parc
[Regional Park] engineers welcomed [them] with games,
Figure 3. Barricades on the western entrance road to L’Amassada. Source: Benoît Sanchez.
Dunlap 9
similar to Monopoly, as a way to explain how great the eco-
logical transition is” (Figure 4). Many participants were
insulted by this and perceived it to be “a way for deputies to
publicize their [environmental] commitments.”33 Some peo-
ple mentioned: “The absence of representatives is a continu-
ation of the rst meetings.” Alexandre Chevillon pleads with
them to watch a video which frames the issue of global
warming, repeats existing statistics about energy consump-
tion in the region—“58% of our consumption” was covered
by renewable energy in 2017— and arms the Regional
Park’s commitment “to cover all of our energy needs thanks
to a renewable energy production by 2030.”34 People were
outraged by the presentation of incomplete information as
well as faulty statistics that included the A75 freeway (creat-
ing a negative statistical slant). They confronted Chevillon
with identied lies concerning the wind turbine numerical
cap. They felt betrayed by the process of decision making
without proper public consultation and sensed that every
energy development plan “is thought and decided before
people even know about the projects.”35 Chevillon keeps
encouraging them to play the board game, justies the statis-
tical arrangement, and reminds everyone “about the fact that
representatives you criticize were democratically elected.”
The consultation ends in theatrical, yet pointed fashion:
Citizen (A75): We came here to tell you that we’ve had
enough of your games and tricks and that we are always los-
ing something because of your projects.
Ex-ofcial: You came to this meeting to drag ocials in
the mud. You’ve done this for previous public events related
to the establishment of energy infrastructures. You are dis-
crediting your own movement/claims.
Citizen (A75): The problem is that democracy doesn’t
exist.
Ex-ofcial: And it’s because of you.
Citizen (A75): I’ve been ghting industrial wind ener-
gy plans for 14 years now. We’ve managed to prevent the
biggest project from being realized in Aveyron. But now we
are talking about a wider scale plan, encompassing not only
Aveyron but the entire Occitanie region. The ght goes on,
but representatives refused to be with us tonight, instead of
that they organized a [private] meeting on their own at 5pm.
Woman: We do not need your project, we are already
self- sucient regarding our energy production. You are de-
veloping renewable energies in an uncontrolled way.
[People start to leave]
A.C.: “You’ve ruined the meeting, thanks a lot.”
Citizen: No we haven’t, we have raised a major issue
regarding your plans and we must talk about it during a real
public consultation.
While the board game made this consultation particularly
patronizing, this is representative of the quality of delibera-
tion and discussion allotted by authorities. The desire for
adequate scientic assurances regarding energy consump-
tion, local pollution, energy development regulations, supply
chain of raw materials and proposed energy use is denied by
theatrical subterfuge. Renewable energy supply chains and
fossil fuel+ systems have also become accomplices of natu-
ral resource extraction in order to rebrand company images
and power the mining operations themselves (Dunlap,
2019c: 14–15; Furnaro, 2019). The issues raised by opposi-
tional residents are highlighting serious socioecological
impacts and developmental trajectories with geopolitical
implications (Hickel, 2019). The consultation, like others
elsewhere (Dunlap, 2018a: Leifsen et al., 2017), worked to
disregard structural, political, and scientic issues related to
energy infrastructure. The board game deected these con-
cerns while serving as a tool to normalize the infrastructural
dispositif and planning perspective. Local administrators
have been promoting varying degrees of neoliberal environ-
mentalism, which is common practice in France.
Already living with nearby energy infrastructure, health
and transnational energy ows are signicant issues for
oppositional residents of St. Victor. Mayor Capel acknowl-
edges that electrical infrastructure “undoubtedly creates
health issues, and we have several cases of tumors and
Figure 4. The board game of the Parc naturel régional des Grands
Causses. Source: Université Rurale.
Human Geography 00(0)
10
Alzheimers disease within the population.”36 While the cor-
relation is dicult to prove scientically, the health concerns
raised by people living close to electrical infrastructures
were similar to those felt in La Ventosa, Oaxaca (Dunlap,
2017, 2019a).37 Marie contends that these health issues com-
bine with negative emotional experiences related to the
transformer’s development process as well as the police
repression experienced by some individuals. I spoke to three
retired EDF and RTE employees,38 who worked with them
for over 30 years, yet stood against the transformer project,
acknowledging the lack of social- collective benets, limited
employment, “evacuation of electricity made from wind
energy,”39 and negative health impacts related to oversaturat-
ing the village with energy infrastructure. The interviews
disclosed personal health issues caused by physical proxim-
ity to electromagnetic elds.40 Based on physics calcula-
tions, the European Council’s precautionary principle
requires people “to be at least one meter away per kilowatt
installed,” explains Patrick (EC (European Commission),
2015).41 For a “400,000 volt infrastructure, populations must
be at least 400 meters away, which creates an uninhabitable
area,” explains Patrick, although “there are no laws or legal
rules regarding the distance between electrical infrastruc-
tures and populations. It allows the state to do as it wants.”
Finally, about the construction of a transnational energy
corridor, Patrick asserts that the transformer is “supposed to
raise the tension to 400,000 Volts.”42 This supports the claim
for the need to have an 800,000 V high- tension wire, which
an RTE representative (when asked in person by Marie)
eventually admitted to its “possibility.”43 The ENTSO- E
(2019) map already conrms the transnational importance of
the St. Victor transformer, which connects not only to the
Asco nuclear plant, but also to hydrological, wind, and solar
resources in the southern Catalonian Terra Alta region
(Franquesa, 2018). Documenting Terra Alta resistance
against energy infrastructural colonization from the 1950s to
present, Franquesa (2018) shows how energy transition in
Iberia was a process of energy transaction and accumulation,
not socioecological transition. Energy- capital accumulation
and “successive additions of new sources of primary energy”
were precisely the concern of Plateau Survolté and
L’Amassada (Bonneuil and Fressoz, 2016: 101). In consulta-
tions and interviews, political representatives claim “fossil
fueled energies or nuclear is meant to disappear in the
future.”44 Harnessing antinuclear sentiments is central to
developing wind and energy infrastructure, yet EDF is cur-
rently building a new—and USD 3.6 billion over- budget
(Kar- Gupta and Twidale, 2019)—nuclear power station in
west England (Sullivan, 2013) and, at the behest of France,
is preparing to build six new third- generation nuclear power
reactors over the next 15 years (Reuters, 2019). Political rep-
resentatives emphasize “local” energy production and
regional “renewable energy solidarity,” and ignore that the
so- called “Occitanie local” reaches until Catalonia. Since
2006, there has been some discussion about a transnational
energy super grid between the EU and North Africa (Sarant,
2015), which the new St. Victor transformer could be an
instrumental part. During the consultation, instead of pro-
posing meaningful participatory strategies to enact genuine
energy transition, residents are confronted with board games,
as well as evasive and antagonistic answers from representa-
tives. The actions of representatives discredit their legiti-
macy, suggesting a lack of information, carelessness, and
further investigation of vested interests.
“War of Attrition”: political repression
against L’Amassada
The resources and political repression dispensed against
L’Amassada have been signicant. The transformer struggle,
Picnic Kitty contends, is “a war of attrition” organized with
the “logic to get people tired and disinterested in the cause.”45
This grassroots movement has focused on blocking con-
struction sites and roads for wind energy development and
organizing information awareness campaigns, demonstra-
tions, carnivals, and conferences, while disrupting public
events. Black Cat explains: “We are building community
together—I wouldn’t use the term ‘occupation’ or ‘ZAD,’ as
these labels are those used by the media and the state to cat-
egorize us in a pejorative way.”46 Wind turbine saboteurs, on
the other hand, criticize L’Amassada’s strategy, advocating
“a backlash based on our own desires against those in power”
on the basis of “[m]obility, stealth and unpredictability” to
stop the operation of capitalist infrastructures (Anonymous,
2018). The French state has attempted to criminalize the
ZAD movement, trying to position them as “extremists” or
terrorists. Identifying capitalism and industrialism as the
cause of ecological catastrophe, members employ a partici-
patory, nonviolent, and self- defense- oriented strategy.
Similarly, Indigenous land defenders in Oaxaca have been
slandered as “indigenous Taliban” (Bárcenas, 2016), while
“Zadists” have been called a “green Jihad.”47 The struggle
against infrastructural colonization in Aveyron experienced
similar “soft” counterinsurgency patterns as those in Oaxaca
(Dunlap, 2019a, 2019c), employed to progressively divide
and exhaust opposition with widespread police surveillance,
harassment, and arrest.
It is analytically useful to think about L’Amassada as
being composed of two waves: the presidio (December
2014–June 2018) and a unique ZAD- like articulation (June
2018–present). Besides the generalized police harassment of
people supportive of the ZAD movement, a clear starting
point is Marie’s aunt who, 68 years old at the time, was inter-
rogated by the police for “a few hours and they made her
think that she was a delinquent, a criminal”48 for allowing
the construction of L’Amassada. The trial was annulled in
2019, with the cost of €4,000–5,000 for the family. It “was
intended to split everyone up and it did!” claimed Marie49
who described the disputes that arose. Police checkpoints
Dunlap 11
throughout the village put people on edge. When they gath-
ered in L’Amassada, police would set up check points nearby,
search vehicles, and monitor parked vehicle license plates—
“they check everything that no cop would ever check on a
roadside stop. When there is an event at L’Amassada they
will stop every single person on the main road—both ways—
to check on everything!” Collectively punishing the village
with police controls employed a divisive strategy to erode
support for L’Amassada. Additionally, anti- ZAD specialist
with experience in Notre- Dame- des- Landes, Gendarmerie
captain Antoine Berna (see Beaubet, 2019), was assigned in
the summer of 2018 to the area.
L'Amassada was also subject to frequent helicopter visits
between 2017 and 2019. Marie explains:
Once they ew above my house six times—six times, then
L’Amassada, the little village, the little hamlet there and an-
other house in St Victor [which are all people concerned with
the struggle]—six times. And who pays the kerosene, who
pays for the pilot and what for? What are they checking?50
Carbon accounting rarely acknowledges the operations of
political repression. On a Saturday after drinking a beer,
Nemesh recounts turning around to a helicopter: “And sud-
denly we hear a sound and just above the hill, just next to us,
there is: ‘rwwwwwwwhhh,’ an elevating helicopter—just in
front of us. And they are looking at us and they have cam-
eras, that’s it.” The helicopter was roughly “20 meters” away
to the point where “you see the faces of the pilots inside.”51
Frequent helicopter visits combined with the presence of
Gendarmerie Mobile Platoon Intervention Units (Les pelo-
tons d'intervention de la gendarmerie mobile)52 and police
surveillance. For instance, there were “two cop cars with a
truck and it had a giant antenna with a guy with binocu-
lars.”53 Surveillance was matched with arrests and interroga-
tions. Responding to civil disobedience actions against the
Crassous wind park, police raided 15 houses in January
2018. The aggressive and humiliating action of the raid var-
ied among houses, yet the apprehended suspects were all
brought to dierent police stations between 1.5 and 2.5 hours
away from their homes. People believe this was a strategy
not only to prevent counter- demonstrations outside the
police station, but also to create transportation issues for
arrestees. People were arrested in front of the schools where
they were delivering their children as well as while people
were in bed. One woman recounts:
It was like seven o'clock or something, but then I heard a
voice that said: “Open the door!” I was like, “Ahhhh… fuck
o! I’m sleeping!” Then the man with me was like, “Answer
it, it’s the police.” I was like, “Nahhhh.” Then they opened
the door, I was naked and I was like, “What are you doing
here!?” The chief of the group handed me a letter and I said,
“Just a letter? You come into my home at seven o’clock to
just give me this fucking letter?” And they said, “No, you are
coming with us.”54
A woman police ocer watched her get dressed, and she
had to explain to her son why she was being handcued.
Frightening her son, the police raid was an exercise of intru-
sion, humiliation, and capture.
The intelligence service, however, took a special interest
in arrestees with generational roots in the region. “The local
intelligence agency of Aveyron, DGSI (General Directorate
for Internal Security) came into the interrogation room,”
recounts Farm Cat. He “tried to explain that he was the guy
from the intelligence agency and that I did not have to be
friends with other cops, but I could cooperate with him—
leader with leader.” Farm Cat refused, and the DGSI agent
continued to pressure Farm Cat telling him:
All your fellow ghters have nothing to lose, but you do.
Think of it, you have a baby. You are about to be a dad and
you are running your own farm with your dad. You will be
alone, your friends will have left and you will still be dealing
with these things.55
The police did everything they could to divide opposi-
tional residents from each other and from neighboring resi-
dents. Resources were mobilized to repress opposition to
energy infrastructure. This “war of attrition,” Picnic Kitty
explains “is a repression spread out over time, it gets exhaust-
ing and it demobilizes people. The police knows this and
they play with it, hoping that the movement runs out” of
energy.
As barricades were erected, hard times fell on L’Amassada
between January and February 2019. RTE declared a €2,000
ne each day for anyone identied to be present on the site
of L’Amassada (Lundimatin, 2019a). There was a lookout
tower (Figure 2) where they would do rounds: “We wake up
at 6am every day to check if the cops are coming,” explains
Pirate Cat,56 “we were told we would not last past March…
so we were like: ‘Okay, maybe it is tomorrow.’” Police
would come in groups of 5–10 and try to catch people living
there, which created a game of dog and cat. Meanwhile
L’Amassada began making links with the Gilets Jaunes
(Yellow Vest) societies in movement. A larger nationwide
movement, the Gilet Jaunes also reacted against a neoliberal
environmental policy that sought to reduce fossil fuel con-
sumption by imposing a fuel tax (Fassin and Defossez,
2019). “People understand,” say Kneading Cat, “that the car-
bon tax on fuel was not to make a transition, but for taxes to
make money.”57 This policy ignited a viral, heterogeneous,
and riotous movement that came to demand social justice
and democratic renewal in the streets on November 18, 2018.
Initially criticized for being antiecological, the movement
replied: “The end of the month and the end of the world is the
same ght.” Gilets Jaunes, since then, have demanded an
aviation and maritime fuel tax along with the restoration of
Human Geography 00(0)
12
the high- income “solidarity tax” (Martin, 2019). Both Gilet
Jaunes and L’Amassada are ghting against neoliberal envi-
ronmentalism. “Gilet Jaunes are ghting for more social jus-
tice—even if it is not always clear what is happening,” Travel
Cat explains:
In the ZAD movement the ecological problems are com-
pletely linked to the social problems, so we are kind of doing
the same here: we are not defending a roundabout, but we
are defending a place and practicing direct democracy and
resisting the police.58
L’Amassada participants created connections with the
Gilet Jaunes during assemblies, occupations, and demon-
strations. During those, there were profound discussions
about wind energy development; “RTE says: ‘We are build-
ing the highway of electricity for the future,’” explained
Vidalou, and “‘we are occupying the roundabout of electric-
ity.’” Occasionally, Gilet Jaunes participants from St.
Arique and Millau would do police lookout shifts at
L’Amassada. Both movements disrupted the circulation of
energy and capital ows; both were against socioecological
injustice; and both would be confronted by surveillance, riot
police, and tear gas.
On February 7, 2019, over 100 police raided L’Amassada
and St. Victor, arresting 5 people. Two of the three arrestees
were simply passing by L’Amassada at the time of the arrest.
In court, on July 3, the ve people were charged €650 with
court administrative fees. L’Amassada participants contin-
ued organizing conferences (Lundimatin, 2019b), spreading
information about their struggle against the transformer and
fossil fuel+ infrastructure. Then at 5 a.m. on October 8, 2019,
about 200 riot police, 15 police vans, 2 armored transport
vehicles, and 2 excavators invaded L’Amassada’s hill
(Lundimatin, 2019c; see Figure 5). The police blocked the
roads to prevent outside support; L’Amassada ignited their
barricades and slowed the onslaught of riot police and their
machines. L’Amassada supporters eventually got on the
roofs, but the police removed them one by one. Afterwards,
the excavators destroyed this ecological anticapitalist space.
Within 48 hours, the site was fenced o with razor wire,
security personnel, 24- hour oodlights, as RTE proceeded to
level out the land (Figure 6). On October 12 and November
1–3, 2019, land reclamation attempts and protests were met
by the riot police with tear gas and arrests. The message is
clear: peace is war, environmentalism is electrical
infrastructure.
Infrastructural colonization: “NO to the
transfo and its world”
Material infrastructure, especially of the techno- industrial
variety, organize environments to accommodate their exis-
tence. Ecologically speaking, industrial infrastructure is
always the coercive articulation of the calculus of human and
nonhuman casualties in spatial interventions (Sullivan,
2013). The social, however, has variegated impacts: con-
structing dierent imaginations (Dalakoglou and Kallianos,
2018), promises (Anand et al., 2018), and enchantments
(Harvey and Knox, 2012). “[I]infrastructures have become
‘matters’ of the crisis itself,” write Dalakoglou and Kallianos
(2018: 86), pointing to the self- reinforcing and perpetuating
relationship between infrastructure and economic crisis.
Infrastructural colonization takes this another step further,
acknowledging the self- reinforcing and perpetuating rela-
tionship of socioecological crisis sustained by the
Figure 5. Riot police and armored vehicles occupy L’Amassada’s southwest entrance. Source: Université Rurale.
Dunlap 13
exponential growth of both conventional and “green” or fos-
sil fuel+ infrastructures.
On October 08, 2019, 4.7 hectares of land was grabbed in
St. Victor. On October 30, 2019, the Conseil Communautaire
(2019: 9) announced that “200 new wind turbines are planned
out of a total of 1,000 projects,” including a solar park. This
expansion is made possible by the new St. Victor trans-
former. Learned dependence on industrial- computational
systems, legislation enforcing technocapitalist development,
and corresponding political repression enforce a global pro-
cess of infrastructural colonization, which inhabits not only
space, but the minds and life worlds of people. Consider
L’Amassada (Figure 6) after its destruction: the space was
enclosed with fences, armored with razor wire, secured with
ood lights, and protected to produce a legible, symmetrical
(at), and socioecologically degraded construction site.
Industrial infrastructure, and infrastructure systems, projects
embody a sociocultural value system that demands ecologi-
cal domination, the proliferation of technical language (that
transcends dierent languages), speed (production–con-
sumption convenience), mass consumption, economic accu-
mulation, and territorial control that have profound, and
underacknowledged, psychogeographic eects.
Infrastructures organize both physical and psychosocial
space by “rolling- out” an infrastructural dispositif.
Severe dependency leads to infrastructural self-
identication. Infrastructural systems and urbanism are the
new habitat (Vidalou, 2017), causing disconnection and sys-
tematic betrayal of ecosystems and nonhuman populations
(Dunlap and Jakobsen, 2020; Dunlap and Sullivan, 2019;
Springer et al., forthcoming). The psychopolitical power of
infrastructural colonization is “hidden like a sewage system,
an undersea cable, a ber optic line running the length of a
railway” says The Invisible Committee (TIC), 2015: “Power
is the very organization of this world, this engineered cong-
ured, purposed world.” Consider this excerpt from a text
written by L’Amassada:
By creating a “territorial space” to manage, to count, to plan,
to homogenize. The [transformer] device does not work if it
does not cut beforehand, and so to speak at every moment,
parcels of land, to produce them as “pole”, as “zone”, as
“site” separated on which to act in return. And if it is nec-
essary by bringing a war to its inhabitants, by chasing the
undesirables: those who refuse the economic order, who
resist colonization. This is the truly despotic character of
spatial planning. The despot here is not to be taken as pure
constraint, but rather as a control and norm- setting device. It
does not answer so much to the question of what to forbid or
not, but to what does or does not t into the norm, which cor-
responds to it or not…. The despot, this hydra, must normal-
ize the territory as much as the bodies; he must homogenize
them, make them comparable, each portion of beings, each
cut part must have its function, be subject to such or such
mode of production. (Lundimatin, 2019d)
The eco- psychogeographical impact of infrastructure and
the ideology of progress that propels its expansion remain
Figure 6. L’Amassada post police invasion. Source: Marie- Bénédicte Vernhet.
Human Geography 00(0)
14
the core of the colonial project. The domination of nature,
myth of human supremacy, the “Othering” of dierence, and
the prioritizing of ecological destruction over other (rela-
tively) ecologically harmonious activities embody the colo-
nial/statist system. Infrastructural colonization—despite all
its technological allure—implants its sociocultural value
system, poisons combative ontologies, and enforces its
cultural- spatial regime. Infrastructural colonization is a ter-
raforming or “cratoforming” process: “a kind of social engi-
neering and legibility- imposing architecture” imposed by
state authority to transform “environments at an elemental
and ecosocial level to favor its own proliferation”
(Gelderloos, 2017: 138; Dunlap, 2019c). Cratoforming
emphasizes social control through spatial organization, but
also technological infrastructures that extend to the so- called
renewable energy systems (Dunlap, 2019a; Han, 2017;
Vidalou, 2017). The green economy has renewed the infra-
structural colonizing force that creates more climate change
and more ecological and habitat disruption, but also psycho-
logical fragmentation with the so- called “clean” or “green”
infrastructures. In the end, infrastructural colonization neces-
sitates an insensitivity toward habitats, nonhuman entities,
and people themselves, an insensitivity and carelessness that
root the onslaught of climate and ecological catastrophe.
Conclusion: green colonization
Ecological and climate catastrophe is the result of systematic
infrastructural colonization. Macron’s “battle plan,” operat-
ing in the name of the environment, indeed is a plan of infra-
structural colonization organized around economic expansion
and state control. Discussing the history of territorial strug-
gles in Aveyron, the ZAD movement, land grabbing, and ter-
ritorialization, this article explores the process of bureaucratic
land grabbing and the procedural development of a trans-
former substation as well as the resistance that formed
against it.
The pregurative ecological and anticapitalist vision of
L’Amassada was crushed by riot police, armored vehicles,
and excavators—the execution of Macron’s “battle plan.”
Socially and ecologically friendly degrowth and postdevel-
opmental pathways remain forcefully o the political menu.
The ideology of technocapitalist progress and the infrastruc-
tural dispositif fashion themselves as “ecologically sustain-
able” and “climate friendly” and employ the discourse of
democracy to double- down on the process of energy- capital
accumulation. Severe climate change denial is embedded in
the infrastructures of industrial society, which rejects the
idea that the modality of technocapitalist development is the
cause of ecological and climate catastrophe. Dependence
and addiction on environmentally destructive computational
systems and modes of organization remain the greatest envi-
ronmental policy issue. Political ontology and (geographi-
cal) landscapes, and more so their postdevelopmental
possibilities, must be reduced, attened, and subjugated to
make way for the transformer. The securitizing, leveling, and
compacting of land necessary to build the transformer
reects an insensitive and reductionary political ontology
that hemorrhages negligent and bias statist/institutional
accounting; public/private sector misinformation; nonbind-
ing and theatrical consultation procedures; and systemic
political corruption that supports the current socioecological
direction dictated by technocapitalist development. The tra-
jectory of progress is enforced through multilayered and
scaled coercion and social engineering (Dunlap, 2019c;
Verweijen and Dunlap, Forthcoming), which means recon-
sidering not only what we consider as “green” and “renew-
able,” but also our relationship to our environments.
Acknowledgements
This article would not be possible without the help and patience
of Jean- Baptiste Vidalou, Nemesh, and the Human Geography
small grant program. Moreover, Marie- Bénédicte Vernhet and
L’Amassada Cats were generous with their time and resources and,
overall, are magnicent people I am honored to have shared my
time with. Special thanks to Vidalou, Nemesh, Adele Tobin, Marie,
Louis Laratteahr, and Louis Bruguerolle with their translation work.
I am also grateful for the editorial comments from Olfee Kitty,
Antoine de Bengy Puyvallée, and Jostein Jakobsen and the general
encouragement and support from the Rural Transformations Group
and SUM administration.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conicts of interest with
respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following nancial support
for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The
authors received funding from Human Geography small grant
program.
ORCID iD
Alexander Dunlap https:// orcid. org/ 0000- 0002- 8852- 9309
Notes
1. Minutes: 5:11, 6:20–53, available at: https://www. youtube.
com/ watch? v= txl6O2GP0yQ
2. The so-called “renewables” are an intermittent energy technol-
ogy dependent on nuclear and thermal (coal) power plants to
stabilize energy grids.
3. While 83.7% of the company is public, 16. 3% percent is pri-
vate (EDF, 2019).
4. Interview 14, April 7, 2018.
5. https://www. everyculture. com/ Europe/ Aveyronnais-
Economy. html
6. Personal Communications, March 2015.
Dunlap 15
7. See https://www. youtube. com/ watch? v= zJMB01iscM0
8. Interview 4, April 2, 2018.
9. Interview 31, Mayor Jean Capel, May 3, 2019.
10. Interview 10, April 6, 2018.
11. Ibid.
12. Interview 31, May 3, 2019.
13. Ibid.
14. Interview 4, April 2, 2018.
15. Watch the documentary: Teaser La Bataille du Teste
(2015). Available at: https://www. youtube. com/ watch? v=
P83r4sVVrdM
16. Interview 9, April 5, 2018
17. Interview 1, April 1, 2018
18. Interview 8, April 5, 2018
19. Interview 7, April 3, 2018.
20. Interview 1, April 1, 2018.
21. Interview 26, April 24, 2019.
22. Notably, I walked into an RTE workshop in St. Arique where
they had a L’Amassada poster on the wall.
23. English subtitles version is titled Nothing Will Stop Us: ZAD
Everywhere! Available at: https://www. youtube. com/ watch?
v= 4huoGY91diM
24. Interview 12, April 7, 2018.
25. Interview 22, April 22, 2019.
26. Hulot’s foundation since 2006 has been receiving €460,000 for
5 years from EDF, RTE’s partner company (Bérard, 2017).
27. Interview 22, April 22, 2019.
28. Ibid.
29. Sexist assumptions were made, as frequently a male gure was
excepted.
30. See the news report: https://www. youtube. com/ watch? v=_
W1QKPb8aNQ
31. Interview 22, April 22, 2019.
32. Field notes, April 21, 2019. Their farm consists of 150 hectares
and 350 sheep that produce milk for Roquefort cheese.
33. Interview 18, April 21, 2019.
34. Consultation Video & Transcript, 0.0, May 25, 2018.
35. Ibid.
36. Interview 31, May 3, 2019.
37. Ibid.
38. Two living within St. Victor and outside, in the Occitanie.
39. Interview 32, May 3, 2019.
40. The interviewed couple both worked for EDF/RTE and be-
gan arguing because their partner refused to explicitly relate
a tumor behind their eye (that caused permanent blindness) to
working around energy infrastructure. Interview 32, May 3,
2019.
41. Interview 27, April 27, 2019.
42. Ibid.
43. Personal Communications, October 29, 2019.
44. Interview 12, April 7, 2018.
45. Interview 17, April 21, 2019.
46. Interview 20, April 22, 2019.
47. Interview 9, April 5, 2018.
48. Interview 22, April 22, 2019.
49. Interview 5, April 2, 2018.
50. Interview 14, April 7, 2018.
51. Interview 8, April 5, 2018.
52. Interview 19, April 21, 2019.
53. Ibid.
54. Interview 6, April 3, 2018.
55. Interview 5, April 2, 2018.
56. Interview 19, April 21, 2019.
57. Interview 16, April 20, 2019.
58. Interview 23, April 23, 2019.
References
ADN (Aveyron Digital News) (2019) Sud- Aveyron. Le Parc
dévoile son « Plan Climat ». Available at: https://www.
aveyrondigitalnews. fr/ 2019/ 02/ 11/ sud- aveyron- le- parc-
devoile- son- plan- climat/
Anand N, Gupta A and Appel H (2018) The Promise of
Infrastructure. Duke University Press.
Anonymous (2018) Sabotage d'éolienne acte 3 la montagne noire.
Available at: https://www. nantes. indymedia. org/ articles/ 42788
Anonymous (2019) Reections on the ZAD: another history.
Available at: https:// crimethinc. com/ 2019/ 04/ 23/ reections- on-
the- zad- looking- back- a- year- after- the- evictions
Avila S (2018) Environmental justice and the expanding geography
of wind power conicts. Sustainability Science 13(3): 599–616.
DOI: 10.1007/s11625-018-0547-4
Bárcenas FL (2016) Los "talibanes indígenas" y el despojo
capitalista. Available at: http://www. jornada. unam. mx/ 2016/
10/ 08/ opinion/ 017a1pol
Beaubet J (2019) Les premiers pas d’Antoine Berna, nouveau
patron de la compagnie du Sud- Aveyron. Available at: https://
www. midilibre. fr/ 2018/ 08/ 28/ les- premiers- pas- dantoine-
berna- nouveau- patron- de- la- compagnie- du- sud- aveyron,
4684388. php
Blaser M (2013) Notes toward a political ontology of
‘environmental’conicts. In: Green L (ed.) Contested Ecologies.
Cape Town: HSRC Press, 13–27.
Bonneuil C and Fressoz J- B (2016) The Shock of the Anthropocene.
New York: Verso Books.
Borras SM, McMichael P and Scoones I (2010) The politics of
biofuels, land and agrarian change: editors' introduction.
The Journal of Peasant Studies 37(4): 575–592. DOI:
10.1080/03066150.2010.512448
Bridge G, Özkaynak B and Turhan E (2018) Energy infrastructure
and the fate of the nation. Energy Research & Social Science
41: 1–11.
Brock A and Dunlap A (2018) Normalising corporate
counterinsurgency. Political Geography 62: 33–47.
Büscher B, Sullivan S, Neves K, et al. (2012) Towards a
synthesized critique of neoliberal biodiversity conservation.
Human Geography 00(0)
16
Capitalism Nature Socialism 23(2): 4–30. DOI:
10.1080/10455752.2012.674149
Churchill W (2003) Acts of Rebellion. New York: Routledge.
Conseil Communautaire (2019) Eoliennes: La Collectivite entre
dans le capital d'EDF Renouvelables. Le Saint- Aricain.
Online: Le Saint- Aricain, 9. Available at: https://www.
lesaintaricain. fr/ images/ stories/ archives/ sta_ 30_ 10_ 2019.
pdf
Corson C, MacDonald KI and Neimark B (2013) Grabbing “Green”:
Markets, Environmental Governance and the Materialization of
Natural Capital Special Issue. Human Geography 6(1): 1–15.
DOI: 10.1177/194277861300600101
Dalakoglou D and Harvey P (2012) Roads and anthropology.
Mobilities 7: 459–465.
Dalakoglou D and Kallianos Y (2018) ‘Eating mountains’ and
‘eating each other’. Political Geography 67: 76–87.
Delga C (2017) Un scénario pour faire d'Occitanie / Pyrénées-
Méditerranée. LA 1ère Règion À Énergie Positive. Available
at: http://www. ville- fontenilles. fr/ wp- content/ uploads/ 2018/ 06/
scenario_ repos_ brochure2017. pdf
Dunlap A (2017) The town is surrounded:' from climate concerns
to life under wind turbines in La Ventosa, Mexico. Human
Geography 10(2): 16–36. DOI: 10.1177/194277861701000202
Dunlap A (2018a) “A bureaucratic trap:” Free, Prior and Informed
Consent (FPIC) and wind energy development in Juchitán,
Mexico. Capitalism Nature Socialism 29(4): 88–108. DOI:
10.1080/10455752.2017.1334219
Dunlap A (2018b) Insurrection for land, sea and dignity: resistance
and autonomy against wind energy in Álvaro Obregón, Mexico.
Journal of Political Ecology 25(1): 120–143. DOI: 10.2458/
v25i1.22863
Dunlap A (2018c) The ‘solution’ is now the ‘problem:’ wind
energy, colonisation and the ‘genocide- ecocide nexus’ in
the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, Oaxaca. The International
Journal of Human Rights 22(4): 550–573. DOI:
10.1080/13642987.2017.1397633
Dunlap A (2018d) End the “Green” delusions: industrial- scale
renewable energy is Fossil Fuel+. Available at: https://
www. versobooks. com/ blogs/ 3797- end- the- green- delusions-
industrial- scale- renewable- energy- is- fossil- fuel
Dunlap A (2019a) Renewing Destruction. London: Rowman &
Littleeld.
Dunlap A (2019b) Reections on authoritarian populism. Available at:
https:// undi scip line denv iron ments. org/ 2019/ 02/ 07/ reections- on-
authoritarian- populism- democracy- technology- and- ecological-
destruction/
Dunlap A (2019c) Wind, coal, and copper: the politics
of land grabbing, counterinsurgency, and the social
engineering of extraction. Globalizations 22: 1–22. DOI:
10.1080/14747731.2019.1682789
Dunlap A and Jakobsen J (2020) The Violent Technologies of
Extraction. London: Palgrave.
Dunlap A and Sullivan S (2019) A Faultline in neoliberal
environmental governance scholarship? Environment and
Planning E, 1–28.
EC (European Commission) (2015) Opinion on potential health
effects of exposure to electromagnetic elds. Available at:
https:// ec. europa. eu/ health/ scientific_ committees/ emerging/
docs/ scenihr_ o_ 041. pdf
EC (European Commission) (2018) Guidance on energy
transmission infrastructure and Eu nature legislation. Available
at: https:// ec. europa. eu/ environment/ nature/ natura2000/
management/ docs/ Energy% 20guidance% 20and% 20EU%
20Nature% 20legislation. pdf
EDF (2019) Capital structure. Available at: https://www. edf. fr/ en/
the- edf- group/ dedicated- sections/ investors- shareholders/ the-
edf- share/ capital- structure
ENTSO- E (2019) ENTSO- E transmission system map. Available at:
https://www. entsoe. eu/ data/ map/
Escobar A (2008) Territories of Difference. Durham: Duke
University Press.
Fairhead J, Leach M and Scoones I (2012) Green grabbing: a new
appropriation of nature? Journal of Peasant Studies 39(2):
237–261. DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2012.671770
Fassin D and Defossez A- C (2019) An improbable movement? New
Left Review, 77–92.
Française R (2018) L'expropriation pour cause d'utilité publique.
Available at: http://www. gers. gouv. fr/ Politiques- publiques/
Environnement/ Operations- d- amenagement- Declaration- d-
Utilite- Publique- cessibilite- autres/ DUP- Declaration- d- Utilite-
Publique- et- Cessibilite/ Expropriation- procedure
Franquesa J (2018) Power Struggles: Dignity, Value, and the
Renewable Energy Frontier in Spain. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press.
Furnaro A (2019) Neoliberal energy transitions: the renewable
energy boom in the Chilean mining economy. Environment and
Planning E, 1–25.
Gelderloos P (2017) Worshiping Power: An Anarchist View of Early
State Formation. Oakland: AK Press.
Gildea R and Tompkins A (2015) The transnational in the local:
the Larzac plateau as a site of transnational activism since
1970. Journal of Contemporary History 50(3): 581–605. DOI:
10.1177/0022009414557909
González- Hidalgo M and Zografos C (2017) How sovereignty
claims and “negative” emotions inuence the process of
subject- making. Geoforum 78: 61–73.
Han B- C (2017) Psychopolitics. London: Verso Books.
Harvey P and Knox H (2012) The enchantments of infrastructure.
Mobilities 7(4): 521–536. DOI: 10.1080/17450101.2012.718935
Hickel J (2019) The limits of clean energy. Available at: https://
foreignpolicy. com/ 2019/ 09/ 06/ the- path- to- clean- energy- will-
be- very- dirty- climate- change- renewables/
Huber M (2015) Theorizing energy geographies. Geography
Compass 9(6): 327–338. DOI: 10.1111/gec3.12214
Hunsberger C, Corbera E, Borras Jr SM, et al. (2017) Climate
change mitigation, land grabbing and conict. Canadian
Journal of Development Studies 38: 305–324.
INSEE (2016) Populations légales 2016Commune de Saint- Victor-
et- Melvieu (12251). Available at: https://www. insee. fr/ fr/
statistiques/ 3681328? geo= COM- 12251
Dunlap 17
Kar- Gupta S and Twidale S (2019) EDF warns UK nuclear plant
could cost extra $3.6 billion, see more delays. Available at:
https://www. reuters. com/ article/ us- britain- nuclear- hinkley- edf/
edf- warns- uk- nuclear- plant- could- cost- extra- 3- 6- billion- see-
more- delays- idUSKBN1WA0T0
Kay S (2016) Land Grabbing and Land Concentration in Europe.
Amsterdam: TNI.
Lake RW (1993) Planners' alchemy transforming NIMBY to
YIMBY: Rethinking NIMBY. Journal of the American Planning
Association 59(1): 87–93. DOI: 10.1080/01944369308975847
Leifsen E, Gustafsson M- T, Guzmán- Gallegos MA, et al. (2017)
New mechanisms of participation in extractive governance.
TWQ 38: 1043–1057.
Leonardi E (2013) Foucault in the Susa Valley: the NO TAV
movement and struggles for Subjectication. Capitalism Nature
Socialism 24(2): 27–40. DOI: 10.1080/10455752.2013.789216
Lund C (2016) Rule and rupture. Development and Change 47:
1199–1228.
Lund C (2019) Colonial lives of property by Brenna Bhandar.
Journal of Peasant Studies 46: 1534–1536.
Lundimatin (2018) Transformateur de Saint- Victor: Quand un
tribunal populaire expulse une juge des expropriations.
Available at: https:// lundi. am/ Transformateur- de- Saint- Victor-
1503
Lundimatin (2019a) Occupation sous tension: Des nouvelles de
l’Amassada (Saint-Victor, Sud- Aveyron). Available at: https://
lundi. am/ Occupation- sous- tension
Lundimatin (2019b) Du 6 au 9 septembre, 5e Fête du vent
l’Amassada. Available at: https:// lundi. am/ Du- 6- au- 9-
septembre- 5eme- Fete- du- vent- a- l- Amassada
Lundimatin (2019c) Expulsion Rebellion : venez passer la Toussaint
Saint- Victor pour enterrer le méga- transformateur: Récit d’une
semaine de résistance l’Amassada. Available at: https:// lundi.
am/ Expulsion- Rebellion- venez- passer- la- Toussaint- a- Saint-
Victor- pour- enterrer- le
Lundimatin (2019d) Trancher le let- réseau : sur la lutte contre les
éoliennes dans le sud Aveyron. Available at: https:// lundi. am/
Trancher- le- let- reseau
Martin B (2019) Green hearts and gilets jaunes. Available at:
https://www. gree neco nomy coal ition. org/ news- analysis/ green-
hearts- and- gilets- jaunes
Mirumachi N, Sawas A and Workman M (2019) Unveiling the
security concerns of low carbon development. Climate and
Development, 1–13.
Monde L (2015) De Notre- Dame- des- Landes Sivens, la carte de
France des projets contestés. Available at: http://www. lemonde.
fr/ les- decodeurs/ visuel/ 2015/ 12/ 21/ la- carte- de- france- des-
projets- contestes_ 4836014_ 4355770. html
MTC (Mauvaise Troupe Collective) (2018 [2016]) The ZAD and
NoTAV: Territorial Struggles and the Making of a New Political
Intelligence. New York: Verso Books.
MTC (Mauvaise Troupe Collective) (2019) Pas res nos arresta!
Préface l’édition italienne du livre de Gérard De Sède: 700 ans
de révoltes occitanes. Available at: https:// mauvaisetroupe. org/
spip. php? article217
Murrey A (2020) Colonialism. In: Kobayashi A (ed.) International
Encyclopedia of Human Geography. 2nd edn., 315–326.
Nadaï A and Labussière O (2009) Wind power planning in France
(Aveyron). Land Use Policy 26: 744–754.
Overbeek W, Kröger M and Gerber J- F (2012) An overview of
industrial tree plantations in the global South. In: Lohmann L
(ed.) EJOLT (Environmental Justice- Organization- Liabilities
and Trade). Barcelona: AUB.
Peluso N and Lund C (2011) New frontiers of land control. The
Journal of Peasant Studies 38: 667–681.
Quadruppani S (2018) Le monde des Grands Projets et ses ennemis.
Paris: Éditions La Découverte.
Rasmussen MB and Lund C (2018) Reconguring frontier spaces.
World Development 101: 388–399.
Reuters (2019) France asks EDF to prepare to build 6 EPR
reactors in 15 years -Le Monde. Available at: https://www.
reuters. com/ article/ us- edf- nuclear- epr/ france- asks- edf-
to- prepare- to- build- 6- epr- reactors- in- 15- years- le- monde-
idUSKBN1WT27T
RTE (2017) Un nouveau poste au coeur du réseau électrique du
Sud Aveyron. Available at: https://www. rte- france. com/ sites/
default/ les/ rte- sudaveyron_ plaquette_ 6_ pages_ v8. pdf
RTE (2019) Sud Aveyron : un nouveau poste électrique pour
sécuriser l’alimentation du Nord de l’Occitanie. Available at:
https://www. rte- france. com/ fr/ projet/ sud- aveyron- un- nouveau-
poste- electrique- pour- securiser- l- alimentation- du- nord- de- l-
occitanie
Sarant L (2015) Desertec: an aborted project or just a change
of direction? Available at: https://www. natureasia. com/ en/
nmiddleeast/ article/ 10. 1038/ nmiddleeast. 2015.4
Scheidel A, Temper L, Demaria F, et al. (2018) Ecological
distribution conicts as forces for sustainability. Sustainability
Science 13: 585–598.
Schroeder RA, Martin KS and Albert KE (2006) Political ecology
in North America. Geoforum 37: 163–168.
Siamanta ZC (2017) Building a green economy of low carbon:
the Greek post- crisis experience of photovoltaics and nancial
'green grabbing'. Journal of Political Ecology 24(1): 258–276.
Siamanta ZC (2019) Wind parks in post- crisis Greece:
neoliberalisation vis-à-vis green grabbing. Environment
and Planning E: Nature and Space 2(2): 274–303. DOI:
10.1177/2514848619835156
Sovacool BK, Hook A, Martiskainen M, et al. (2020) The
decarbonisation divide: Contextualizing landscapes of low-
carbon exploitation and toxicity in Africa. Global Environmental
Change 60: 1–19. DOI: 10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.102028
Springer S, Locret M, Mateer J, et al. (forthcoming) Anarchist
Political Ecology. Oakland: PM Press.
Sullivan S (2005) ‘We are heartbroken and furious!’ Rethinking
violence and the (anti)globalisation movements. In: Eschle
C and Maiguashca B (eds) Critical Theories, International
Relations and the Anti- Globalisation Movement. London:
Routledge, 175–194.
Sullivan S (2013) After the green rush? Biodiversity osets,
uranium power and the ‘Calculus of Casualties’ in
Human Geography 00(0)
18
greening growth. Human Geography 6(1): 80–101. DOI:
10.1177/194277861300600106
Terral P- M (2011) Larzac: de la lutte paysanne l'altermondialisme.
Paris: Privat.
The Invisible Committee (TIC) (2015) To Our Friends. South
Pasadena: Semiotext(e).
Trieb F, Kern J, Caldés N, et al. (2016) Rescuing the concept of solar
electricity transfer from North Africa to Europe. International
Journal of Energy Sector Management 10(3): 448–473. DOI:
10.1108/IJESM-12-2014-0003
Verweijen J and Dunlap A (Forthcoming) Introducing political (re)
actions ‘from above’. Political Geography.
Vidalou J- B (2017) Être forêts: habiter des territoires en lutte.
Paris: Zones.
Weber E (1976) Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization
of rural France, 1870-1914. Palo Alto: Stanford University
Press..
White B, Borras SM, Hall R, et al. (2012) The new enclosures.
Journal of Peasant Studies 39: 619–647.
Zehner O (2012) Green Illusions. Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press.
Zibechi R (2012) Territories in Resistance. Oakland: AK Press.
Author Biography
AlexanderDunlap is a postdoctoral research fellow at the
Centre for Development and the Environment, University of
Oslo. His work has critically examined police–military
transformations, market- based conservation, wind energy
development, and extractive projects more generally in both
Latin America and Europe. He has published in Anarchist
Studies, Geopolitics, Journal of Peasant Studies, Capitalism,
Nature, Socialism, Political Geography, Journal of Political
Ecology, Environment and Planning E, and a recent article in
Globalizations.
