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Life Worlds of Middle Eastern Oil: Histories and Ethnographies of Black Gold

Online ISBN:
9781399506168
Print ISBN:
9781399506144
Publisher:
Edinburgh University Press
Book

Life Worlds of Middle Eastern Oil: Histories and Ethnographies of Black Gold

Nelida Fuccaro (ed.),
Nelida Fuccaro
(ed.)
New York University Abu Dhabi
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Mandana Limbert (ed.)
Mandana Limbert
(ed.)
Queens College / The Graduate Center, CUNY
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Published online:
21 September 2023
Published in print:
10 January 2023
Online ISBN:
9781399506168
Print ISBN:
9781399506144
Publisher:
Edinburgh University Press

Abstract

Drawing on original and empirically grounded case studies, the volume examines how petroleum became constitutive of societies, cultures, and experiences in the twentieth and twentieth-first centuries. Rather than focusing on “Big Oil” - the world of major corporations, government and global business that has been the focus of other studies of Middle East Oil - this collection of essays highlights oil’s everyday social, cultural and artistic presence, its simultaneous ubiquity and inconspicuousness, its visibility and invisibility. Oil is recognized as a particular natural resource explored by geologists and engineers; as an extractive industry that has triggered contestation over labour and borders; as a commodity shaped by and experienced through photography and advertising as well as art, architecture, and design; and as a seemingly ephemeral substance forging new national subjectivities and spatial imaginaries, including those influenced by enhanced mobilities and automobility. The volume analyses oil both as a medium and a metonym: how it has mediated experience but also how it has been appropriated, represented, and objectified. The volume includes chapters written as shorter essays that showcase artistic, architectural, and design pieces.

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