Threats to Power: Methane Extraction in Rwanda

The Anthropology Department welcomes Kristin Doughty to deliver her lecture “Threats to Power: Methane Extraction in Rwanda.”

At the border of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo sits Lake Kivu, an infamous freshwater lake whose scenic beauty conceals vast stores of methane and carbon dioxide. On its shores, internationally financed companies, in partnership with the Rwandan state, have built the world's only dissolved-methane-to-electricity projects.

In this lecture, I will talk about my forthcoming book Threats to Power (MIT Press), which situates these projects within the long standing shadow of Rwanda's post-genocide reconstruction, asking how a lake came to be understood as an existential danger in a region shaped by devastating human violence.

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted with engineers, government officials, and communities around Kivu, my project examines efforts to transform methane from threat to resource—and what these efforts reveal about the exercise of contemporary forms of power.

Bringing energy into conversation with carceral geography and war ecologies, I trace how a dangerous gas becomes a tool of national repair, uncovering the fraught relationship between technological promise, sovereign power, and the lived realities of those who dwell at the lake's edge.

Kristin Doughty is an associate professor of anthropology at the University of Rochester. The talk will be facilitated by Saida Hodžić, associate professor of anthropology at Cornell University, and Nikita Agarwal and Nora Stocovaz, SU anthropology Ph.D. students. The talk is co-sponsored by the CNY Humanities Corridor War Ecologies Working Group.