ANTH 302: Oil, Culture, Power (HC)

The essays in this volume cover the whole spectrum of the politics of oil. Part I provides a broad overview of the political dimensions underlying the supply of oil. Part II examines some of the political responses to oil-related developments. Part III examines oil and political power in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and South-East Asia. Part IV expands some of the main regional themes through a series of case studies on specific countries: Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Russia and Brazil.

Omolade Adunbi investigates the myths behind competing claims to oil wealth in Nigeria's Niger Delta. Looking at ownership of natural resources, oil extraction practices, government control over oil resources, and discourse about oil, Adunbi shows how symbolic claims have created an "oil citizenship."

This book explores how countries form their foreign policy preferences and intentions. Why are some but not all oil-exporting 'petrostates' aggressive? To answer this question, a theory of aggressive foreign policy preferences is developed and then tested, using both quantitative and qualitative methods. Using case studies including Iraq, Iran, Libya, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, this book offers new insight into why oil politics has a central role in global peace and conflict.

The author presents an anthropological analysis of the regulatory technologies that characterize contemporary resource frontiers. He offers an ethnographic portrayal of indigenous rights, resource extraction and environmental politics in the Peruvian Amazon.