Challenging wind power as a source of wealth in Penghu, Taiwan: toward an anthropology of wind's entangling materiality

Abstract Many residents of Penghu, Taiwan refused to invest in wind power that the local government sought to develop as a stable source of wealth because of their conception of local winds as unique but destructive. Using the notion of wind’s “entangling materiality”—its fluidity and its capacities to connect with others and act on others—this article examines how and why the local wind played a pivotal role in people deciding not to invest in wind power. It demonstrates that the locals doubted the value and viability of wind power as a green commodity, as they believed that the winds that shape and carry xianyu (salty rain, a combination of salt and seawater droplets) would damage the productivity of wind turbines by causing corrosion and breakdown. This article therefore argues that wind operates as an ambivalent infrastructure that simultaneously allows and prevents the proper functioning of wind turbines while rendering workable and unworkable capitalist expectations for wind power. It thus contributes to rethinking our understanding of nature as infrastructure and places the wind and what it does at center stage in the social analysis of wind power, a place that land and territorialization issues have occupied.