Publications
Elsewheres of the Unbuilt: The Global Effects of Transnational Energy Infrastructure Projects
IJURR (2024): This article delves into the intricate dynamics of global energy infrastructure through major projects such as the East African Crude Oil Pipeline (EACOP), the Central American Electric Interconnection System (SIEPAC), and the Mediterranean Electricity Ring (MedRing).
Routes to Disruption - Supply Chain Sabotage and Israel’s War on Gaza
MERIP (2024): Activists are attempting to disrupt Israel's military operations in Gaza by targeting supply chains. The article examines the role of U.S. jet fuel and historical resistance tactics.
The Uneven Politics of Decarbonization in the Middle East and North Africa
MERIP (2024): How are renewable energy projects in the Middle East and North Africa reinforcing existing power structures? Benjamin Schuetze's article reveals how authoritarian elites and multinational corporations benefit, while local populations are often sidelined. Key projects like the Morocco-UK Power Project illustrate ongoing economic inequalities and neocolonial dependencies.
Supporting plausible acts of genocide: Red lines and the failure of German Middle Eastern Studies
POMEPS (2024): Schuetze discusses the criminalisation of Palestinian identity and Palestine solidarity, red lines faced by Germany-based scholars of Middle Eastern politics, and their role in upholding images of German redemption, innocence and moral authority, while also facilitating support for plausible acts of genocide.
Facilitating energy flows, containing humans: Authoritarian energy transitions in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region
TNI (2024): In this longread, Schuetze, El Khazen, Mueller & Wagner explore how, portrayed as a ‘green revolution’, European investments in renewables extract energy and profits, while bypassing local communities, strengthening authoritarian governments, increasing indebtedness and privatising economies.
‘Seizing the Moment’: Arab-Israeli normalization, infrastructure as a means to bypass politics and the promotion of an Israeli-Jordanian transit trade-route
Geopolitics (2024): Schuetze analyzes efforts at Arab-Israeli normalisation in Jordan. Exploring what happens when trade routes stop, the article offers an empirically-grounded discussion of attempts at normalisation via infrastructure as a means to bypass politics.
Follow the Grid, Follow the Violence: The Project for a Transregional Mediterranean Electricity Ring
Middle East Critique (2023): Schuetze investigates how violence and exclusion are embedded within the Mediterranean electricity ring project, revealing how local violence connects with transregional electricity flows. His analysis exposes the project's dual nature: promoting sustainable energy integration while also reinforcing Eurocentric exclusion and colonial violence against Arab populations and Mediterranean refugees.
The geopolitical economy of an undermined energy transition: The case of Jordan
Energy Policy (2023): In this article, Schuetze & Hussein argue that Jordanian efforts at energy transition have increasingly been undermined since 2019, reinforcing both authoritarian practices and dependence on fossil fuels and Israel.
Authoritarian power and contestation beyond the state
Globalizations (2023): The introduction to the special issue focuses on authoritarian practices and their spatial and temporal articulations in (1) transregional infrastructures, (2) global processes of capital accumulation and (3) nature-society relations.