Subterranean estates : life worlds of oil and gas / edited by Hannah Appel, Arthur Mason, and Michael Watts.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Appel, Hannah, 1978- editor.

Mason, Arthur, 1965- editor.

Watts, Michael, 1951- editor.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Gas industry--Political aspects.

Gas industry.

Gas industry--Social aspects.

Petroleum industry and trade--Political aspects.

Petroleum industry and trade.

Petroleum industry and trade--Social aspects.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (432 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2015]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

"Oil is a fairy tale, and, like every fairy tale, is a bit of a lie."-Ryzard Kapuscinski, Shah of ShahsThe scale and reach of the global oil and gas industry, valued at several trillions of dollars, is almost impossible to grasp. Despite its vast technical expertise and scientific sophistication, the industry betrays a startling degree of inexactitude and empirical disagreement about foundational questions of quantity, output, and price. As an industry typified by concentrated economic and political power, its operations are obscured by secrecy and security. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that the social sciences typically approach oil as a metonym-of modernity, money, geopolitics, violence, corruption, curse, ur-commodity-rather than considering the daily life of the industry itself and of the hydrocarbons around which it is built.Subterranean Estates gathers an interdisciplinary group of scholars and experts to instead provide a critical topography of the hydrocarbon industry, understood not solely as an assemblage of corporate forms but rather as an expansive and porous network of laborers and technologies, representation and expertise, and the ways of life oil and gas produce at points of extraction, production, marketing, consumption, and combustion. By accounting for oil as empirical and experiential, the contributors begin to demystify a commodity too often given almost demiurgic power. Subterranean Estates shifts critical attention away from an exclusive focus on global oil firms toward often overlooked aspects of the industry, including insurance, finance, law, and the role of consultants and community organizations. Based on ethnographic research from around the world (Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, Oman, the United States, Ecuador, Chad, the United Kingdom, Kazakhstan, Canada, Iran, and Russia), and featuring a photoessay on the lived experiences of those who inhabit a universe populated by oil rigs, pipelines, and gas flares, this innovative volume provides a new perspective on the material, symbolic, cultural, and social meanings of this multidimensional world.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction. Oil Talk / Appel, Hannah / Mason, Arthur / Watts, Michael

Part I. Oil as a Way of Life

Chapter 1. Oil For Life / Huber, Matt

Chapter 2. Velocity and Viscosity / Hitchcock, Peter

Chapter 3. Deep Oil and Deep Culture in the Russian Urals / Rogers, Douglas

Chapter 4. Oil, Masculinity, and Violence / Timsar, Rebecca Golden

Part II. The Oil Archive, Expertise, and Strategic Knowledges

Chapter 5. The Oil Archives / Barry, Andrew

Chapter 6. Securing the Natural Gas Boom / Wylie, Sara

Chapter 7. Crude Contamination / Sawyer, Suzana

Chapter 8. The Image World of Middle Eastern Oil / Damluji, Mona

Photo Essay. Specters Of Oil. / Watts, Michael J.

Part III. Oil Markets.

Chapter 9. Near Futures and Perfect Hedges in the Gulf of Mexico / Johnson, Leigh

Chapter 10. Securing Oil. / Watts, Michael J.

Chapter 11. Oil Assemblages and the Production of Confusion. / Guyer, Jane I.

Part IV. Hard and Soft Infrastructures

Chapter 12. Offshore Work. / Appel, Hannah

Chapter 13. Black Oil Business. / Gelber, Elizabeth

Chapter 14. The Political Economy Of Oil Privatization In Post-Soviet Kazakhstan / Yessenova, Saulesh

Part V. Oil Futures And Oil Transitions

Chapter 15. Carbon, Convertibility, And The Technopolitics of Oil. / Knox, Hannah

Chapter 16. Events Collectives. The Social Life of a Promise-Disappointment Cycle / Mason, Arthur

Chapter 17. Reserves, Secrecy, and the Science of Oil Prognostication in Southern Arabia / Limbert, Mandana E.

Chapter 18. Vicious Transparency. / Zalik, Anna

References

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 371- 408) and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 08. Jul 2019)

ISBN:

9780801455391

0801455391

9780801455407

0801455405

OCLC:

918136060