Steven
Schwartz

Anthropologist
I am a sociocultural anthropologist from Venezuela.

My research explores how the global rise of renewable energy intersects with Indigenous peoples’ environmental relations, practices of resistance, and political and economic life in Latin America. I teach courses on energy, extractivism, development, climate justice, ethnographic methods, and Indigenous environmental movements.

I am an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Colorado College. Currently, I am developing my first book project, tentatively titled Wind Futures: Indigeneity, Aerial Worlds, and the Making of Renewable Energy in Colombia. This ethnography traces the multifaceted ways in which indigenous Wayúu communities, energy experts, and state bureaucrats experience, negotiate, and shape the transition from fossil fuels to renewables in La Guajira– one of the windiest places in South America. Research

My
expertise

Energy Transitions

Renewable energy
Climate change mitigation
Sustainability
Decarbonization

Politics of Resource Extraction

Extractivism
Corporations
Corporate social responsibility
Development
Value
Gift economies
Illicit flows

Indigeneity

Indigenous environmental politics Sovereignty
Settler-colonialism
Borders
Colombia & Venezuela

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