Dissertation: “Fracking Texas: Activism and Resistance Along the Supply Chain”

The University of Texas at Austin

2013-2019

Principal Investigator, Ph.D. Candidate

Project Summary:

I used ethnography and qualitative research methods to understand the activism, politics, and social connections of fracking within and between conservative and communities of color in throughout Texas.

The Challenge:

Texas is synonymous with oil and gas and many in the state support “energy independence” and the fracking economy that has brought wealth and jobs. Yet some unlikely bedfellows see fracking around the state as a threat to the environment, community, and their health. White rural ranchers and people of color in urban areas spoke up about and worked in different ways to stop fracking and have run up against the political and corporate forces that seek to maintain the carbon economy’s status quo during this moment of climate crisis. Why are these seemingly polar opposite groups working together? How can we understand this moment where environmental racism, global climate change, and an economy build around carbon fuels have united very different people against a common enemy?

I needed to spend a considerable amount of time in the field. I decided to use a multi-sited approach that fit with my interest in the fracking supply chain (from well to refinery) so that my readers could understand both the social and geographical interconnections of the fracking economy within Texas. I had to find contacts who worked within activist circles and earn trust, as there is considerable risk in speaking out against the oil and gas industry in Texas.

I had to understand how popular perceptions of the oil and gas industry, so often pitched as a benevolent force that lifts all boats, have such power in the state. Would my subjects come into conflict with this ideology in their efforts to stop fracking? Would they reject it wholesale? What sorts of public institutions could I find to help me understand the different ways people see and understand the carbon economy and fracking in Texas? How are these extractive practices justified even as growing evidence points to the toxic effects of fracking as well as the greenhouse emissions that exacerbate global climate change?

Finally, while the dissertation was an academic endeavor, my advisors stressed that the final project should look like a deliverable to a popular press or an academic press interested in broader audiences. To this end, I needed to avoid jargon, esoteric academic debates, or theoretical discourses. Instead, my advisors suggested using an investigative journalism approach with my academic training to translate technical and complex ideas for general readership. I found models that accomplished this goal and collaborated with scholars who worked in Texas on the anthropology or sociology of oil and gas.

Solution:

I used an interdisciplinary approach to ethnographic field work in three regions of Texas impacted by fracking to understand the situation of the ground: South Texas during the drilling boom, West Texas and the expansion of pipeline that connect to frack wells, and the Houston area, where the crude from fracking is refined. I interviewed over two dozen residents, activists, and politicians to understand how even in conservative Texas many communities have tried to resist and seek remedy from the fracking economy in their neighborhoods as either an extension of environmental racism or property rights and conservation.

My ethnographic fieldwork yielded complex qualitative data that showed there were complex relationships between people’s class, race, gender, urban or rural living environment, and politics. I used open ended interviews, I went to group meetings, I met people in their homes, I lead group discussions and questions, and I observed how they did their work together as a community. I paired this qualitative research with quantitative data about the industry, the fracking process, health and toxic effects of fracking, and legal cases within the state that challenged the fracking industry (but were often unable to stop the power of the industry and its political allies).

I found that white, rural, conservative men and women mostly over forty were eager to learn about how fracking affects their health and their property while dismissing their concerns as part of the environmental movement. (Women, however, were more open to making more complex connections to environmental issues beyond their backyard.) Still, they did not see themselves as activists.

In urban environments, people of color were largely on the front lines of fighting a much longer struggle of environmental racism. They adopted the activist label and connected their work to larger social and political issues that affect low-income communities of color. Activist leaders were younger but part of multi-generational struggles. They were weary of more mainstream environmental organizations because of their relationship to colonialism, displacement, and “white” issues like saving endangered species (rather than concern for those living not far from the affluent suburbs).

What brought these groups together was a sense of impending change, that fracking was both materially destructive and symbolically intrusive, part of a great acceleration towards more extraction, greater pollution, and exacerbated global warming. While rural conservatives were less interested in global climate change, they believed that fracking heralded a type of dangerous corporate indifference to their way of life, an intrusion of the city into rural Texas where people sought to keep a safe distance from dirty industries, modernity, and excesses of spoils of the oil and gas industry.

A few activists in Houston found recognized this common ground and organized rural residents near oil fields to try to create change. While those I talked to did not share the political views of rural Texans, they saw a chance to reach out and connect, creating another type of linkage that, they thought, could disrupt the supply chain and perhaps fight fracking with a coalition of allies all around the state.

Results:

The dissertation culminated in a two-hundred page book manuscript aimed at broad audiences as well as academics. In it, I translated my findings on the ground for general readership, people in public policy, activism, government, and educators. I learned that people were responsive to the complexities of this moment and were eager to learn more about people and places beyond the blue-and-red geographies. I presented my findings at academic conferences as well as in invited public forums. I completed my dissertation ahead of schedule in my time-to-degree program and my dissertation committee did not request any further edits, revisions, or research. I won partial funding for this dissertation through competitive grants and fellowships totaling more than $35,000.