End of Transition? Expropriation, Resource Nationalism, Fuzzy Research, and Corruption of Environmental Institutions in the Making of the Shale Gas Revolution in Northern Poland

This article focuses on the Polish state's strategies in making “space” for the shale gas revolution. It focuses on the state's utilization of law, research, and domination of the political debate to ensure that the shale gas exploration is legitimated on the local level and in the European Union (EU). Furthermore, this article asks what implications Poland's entrance into the shale gas revolution has had on its transition as a post-socialist state into the market economy. It points out the paradoxes of a shale gas revolution being replicated from the USA to Europe, the disjuncture between the rapidity of shale gas exploration versus public knowledge about the process, the political issues surrounding the rise of resource nationalism vis-a-vis the dependence on foreign technology in the exploration process, and raises the question of whether shale gas exploration is a national or European issue. Finally, it asks how these shale gas developments, the state's passage of laws that allow the foreign expropriation of private property owners fits into the idea of post-socialist “transition” to a market economy. Is it over? Has it back-tracked? Or do post-socialist ethnographers need a new theoretical framework?