Description
This paper explores ways in which specific conceptions of human-nature relations underpin engagements with rurality as a source of energy, labour, and food. I do this by examining past and ongoing projects of (green) extractivism in Cetinska Krajina. More specifically, I tease out the conceptions of nature—land, plants, water, and non-human animals—that underpin project plans, and their place within wider political economies. This area is paradoxically known for depopulation and war suffering, while situated in the hinterland of the developed tourist industry of southern Croatia. The Cetina River basin is the ‘hydropower giant of Croatia’ and home to the Peruća accumulation lake, built in in 1958 by relocating peasants and nationalising land. The lake embodies the anthropogenic power of Yugoslav socialism, and post-socialist dreams of tourism and energy development. Today, more scattered, but no less ambitious, plans abound. By putting in conversation different eras of energy transition, the paper highlights the continuity and malleability of ways in which rural human-nature relations become sites of modernist dreams.
