The anti-frackers: an ethnographic account of the South African fracking debate

• Main Author: Van der Merwe, Lawrence
• Other Authors: Green, Lesley
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: University of Cape Town 2016
• Subjects: Social Anthropology
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/20108

This paper details an intermittent six months of ethnographic fieldwork, interviews and participant observation carried out between September 2014 - March 2015, among members of the Treasure the Karoo Action Group and three other South Africans labeled "anti-frackers" and/or "environmentalists": a filmmaker, an entrepreneur, and an attorney. Drawing from analysis of literature, news and multimedia published outside the period of engaged research, the paper explores the contested process of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) from the perspective of those who work to ensure that this technique of shale gas extraction will not be allowed, or will be proven unnecessary, in South Africa. The dissertation details the author's attempts to understand how the binary of "pro"/"anti" is used in the ongoing fracking "debate", and contrasts this with the work of those who have sought to craft positions that stand outside of the prevailing polemic. Tracing the stakes and interests involved in the potential for the use and sale of shale gas through a series of expeditions into the Karoo, the thesis seeks to problematize the idea that there is a fracking "debate" at hand between two collective fronts: the so-called "pro-frackers" and their opponents the "anti-frackers". In the Latourian sense of the term the dissertation critiques the construction of these two 'phantom publics', presenting a series of nuanced personal profiles in a call for a new appreciation of the diverse human, financial and natural forces at play in this currently unfolding scenario.