Description
Northeastern Arizona has experienced a recent increase in helium extraction activity. This qualitative case study articulates and explores various sociotechnical imaginaries – or, collectively produced social justifications for technological decisions and systems – that inform this new stage of underground helium extraction. Leveraging two years of interviews, document analysis, and participant observations to understand and interrogate the political and cultural origins of perceptions around helium extraction, I examined how these imaginaries and associated power dynamics influenced communication within and between stakeholder groups. In order to mitigate the power differentials between stakeholder groups, and put these imaginaries in conversation with each other, I led the development of a series of short videos that explain controversial technoscientific concepts from this research. These videos were produced in continuous collaboration with multiple disparate stakeholders, including activists, regulators, and industry members, in order to create a space for a productive conversation and reflection to explore tensions between conflicting points of view between stakeholders. This iterative work used the imaginaries of helium extraction in Arizona to produce a space for collective deliberation that can result in negotiated shared knowledge through brokered dialogue amongst these disparate groups and their competing visions of Arizona’s helium futures.
Details
Title
- Brokered Dialogue on Broken Ground Deliberations Over Management for Helium Extraction in Northeastern Arizona
Contributors
- Bruhis, Noa (Author)
- Jalbert, Kirk (Thesis advisor)
- Richter, Jennifer (Thesis advisor)
- Williams, Wendy R (Committee member)
- Jenkins, Lekelia (Committee member)
- Arizona State University (Publisher)
Date Created
The date the item was original created (prior to any relationship with the ASU Digital Repositories.)
2022
Subjects
Resource Type
Collections this item is in
Note
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Partial requirement for: Ph.D., Arizona State University, 2022
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Field of study: Environmental Social Science