Local control: authority, resistance, and knowledge production in fracking

In this article, we review recent scholarship on fracking vis‐à‐vis the crosscutting problems of authority, resistance, and knowledge production. A focus on the sociocultural context within which hydraulic fracturing occurs and is made sense of in the United States provides us an opportunity to show gaps in understandings and propose further research to address them. Additionally, our focus on the US context demonstrates the importance of the historically particular and place‐specific nature of resource extraction for understanding fracking as a social process. We argue that factors such as race, history, and colonialism are mobilized or obscured differently by scholars and local actors in order to establish and contest power as well as produce knowledge about fracking. Finally, we are interested in how to make better conceptual use of the future and emerging local debates amongst frontline actors. WIREs Water 2017, 4:e1197. doi: 10.1002/wat2.1197 This article is categorized under: Human Water > Rights to Water Engineering Water > Sustainable Engineering of Water Human Water > Water Governance