Flammable Societies

Description

The impact of the oil and gas industry – paradoxically seen both as a blessing and a curse on socio-economic development – is a question at the heart of the comparative studies in this volume stretching from Northern Europe to the Caucasus, the Gulf of Guinea to Latin America.



Britain’s transformation under Margaret Thatcher into a supposedly post-industrial society orientated towards consumer sovereignty was paid for with revenues from the North Sea oil industry, an industry conveniently out of sight and out of mind for many. Other case studies include resource struggles in Bolivia, oil money in Venezuela and the Azerbaijani oil boom among many others.



Drawing on bottom-up research and theoretical reflection, this book questions the political and scientific basis of current international policy that aims to address the problem of resource management through standard Western models of economic governance, institution building and national sovereignty.
1. Introduction. Rethinking Responsibility and Governance in Resource Extraction, by Owen Logan & John-Andrew McNeish

Part 1 Resource Sovereignties

2. On Curses and Devils: Resource Wealth and Sovereignty in an Autonomous Tarija, Bolivia, by John-Andrew McNeish

3. A Contribution to the Critique of Post-Imperial British history -

North Sea oil, Scottish Nationalism and Thatcherite Neoliberalism, by Terry Brotherstone

4. Where Pathos Rules: the Resource Curse in Visual Culture, by Owen Logan

Part 2 States of Collective Consumption

5. Development from Below and Oil Money from Above: Popular Organisation in Contemporary Venezuela, by Iselin Åsedotter Strønen

6. Living Under the Bullet: Internal Displacement in the Azerbaijani Oil Boom, by Heidi Kjærnet

7. The Socio-Economic Dynamics of Gas in Bolivia, by Fernanda Wanderley, Leila Mokrani, Alice Guimarães

8. Subsidised Energy and Hesitant Elites in Russia, by Indra Overland and Hilde Kutschera

Part 3. Supply Side Governmentality

9. North Sea Oil, the State and Divergent Development in the UK and Norway, by Andrew Cumbers

10. A Country without a State? Governmentality, Knowledge and Labour in Nigeriam by Femi Folorunso, Philippa Hall, Owen Logan

11. The Race to the Bottom and the Demise of the Landlord: The Struggle over Petroleum Revenues Historically and Comparatively, by Anna Zalik

12. Law’s Role in the Tension between Security and Sovereignty in the Field of Energy Resources, by John Paterson

13. Fossil Knowledge: Networks, Industry Strategy, Public Culture, and the Challenge for Critical Research, by Bret Gustafson

14. Conclusion. All Other Things Do Not Remain Equal, by John-Andrew McNeish & Owen Logan

Contributors

Index

Sujets

• Economic Development
• Industries
• Sciences et techniques
• Development economics
• Economic growth
• Energy
• Economics
• Development
• Business

Informations

• Publié par: Pluto Press
• Date de parution: 06 janvier 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781783714810
• Langue: English

Extrait

Flammable Societies
FLAMMABLE SOCIETIES
Studies on the Socio-economics of Oil and Gas
Edited by John-Andrew McNeish and Owen Logan
First published 2012 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA
www.plutobooks.com
Distributed in the United States of America exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010
Copyright © John-Andrew McNeish and Owen Logan 2012
The right of the individual contributors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN    978 0 7453 3118 8    Hardback ISBN    978 0 7453 3117 1    Paperback ISBN    978 1 8496 4712 0    PDF eBook ISBN    978 1 7837 1482 7    Kindle eBook ISBN    978 1 7837 1481 0    EPUB eBook
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Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The authors and publisher apologise for any errors or omissions in this respect and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.
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Contents
List of Figures Acknowledgements
  INTRODUCTION
     1
  Rethinking Responsibility and Governance in Resource Extraction Owen Logan and John-Andrew McNeish
  PART 1    RESOURCE SOVEREIGNTIES
     2
  On Curses and Devils: Resource Wealth and Sovereignty in an Autonomous Tarija, Bolivia John-Andrew McNeish
     3
  A Contribution to the Critique of Post-Imperial British History: North Sea Oil, Scottish Nationalism and Thatcherite Neoliberalism Terry Brotherstone
     4
  Where Pathos Rules: The Resource Curse in Visual Culture Owen Logan
  PART 2    STATES OF COLLECTIVE CONSUMPTION
     5
  Development from Below and Oil Money from Above: Popular Organisation in Contemporary Venezuela Iselin Åsedotter Strønen
     6
  Living under the Bullet: Internal Displacement in the Azerbaijani Oil Boom Heidi Kjærnet
     7
  The Socio-economic Dynamics of Gas in Bolivia Fernanda Wanderley, Leila Mokrani and Alice Guimarães
     8
  Subsidised Energy and Hesitant Elites in Russia Indra Øverland and Hilde Kutschera
  PART 3    SUPPLY-SIDE GOVERNMENTALITY
     9
  North Sea Oil, the State and Divergent Development in the United Kingdom and Norway Andrew Cumbers
  10
  A Country Without a State? Governmentality, Knowledge and Labour in Nigeria Femi Folorunso, Philippa Hall and Owen Logan
  11
  The Race to the Bottom and the Demise of the Landlord: The Struggle over Petroleum Revenues Historically and Comparatively Anna Zalik
  12
  Law’s Role in the Tension Between Security and Sovereignty in the Field of Energy Resources John Paterson
  13
  Fossil Knowledge Networks: Industry Strategy, Public Culture and the Challenge for Critical Research Bret Gustafson
  14
  Conclusion: All Other Things Do Not Remain Equal John-Andrew McNeish and Owen Logan
  Contributors Index
List of Figures

Frontispiece
From allegories inside the oil economy. The hunter as warrior, oil storage tank under construction, Port Harcourt, Nigeria
Part 1 frontispiece
Mario Martinez Choque, trade union veteran of a divided workforce at the tin mines in Huanuni, Bolivia
Part 2 frontispiece
Reading the Constitution, Constitutional workshop, Miranda State, Venezuela
Part 3 frontispiece
The church under the Enron Building Houston, Texas, USA 4.1 Ibo separatist guerrilla, near Onitsha, Biafra, Nigeria, April 1968 4.2 Leyenda obrero , the image of the ‘mythical’ YPFB worker 4.3 Covers from the British publication the Sunday Worker in the 1920s, showing the early, and in this instance, satirical use of juxtaposition 4.4 Page from Workers’ Illustrated News , December 1929 4.5 Double-Page Spread from Workers’ Illustrated News , December 1929 4.6 ‘Opening Night at the Opera’, 1948 4.7 Montage from the book The Greatest Show on Earth: A Photographic Story of Man’s Struggle for Wealth , by S.A. Spencer, with art direction by Leslie Beaton, 1938 4.8 The closing spread of The Greatest Show on Earth 4.9 Photomontage by Karel Hajek, 1934 4.10 Photograph by Sebastiào Salgado (ex-Magnum) used by Lime Blue Diamond Store for their advertising campaign in Edinburgh, 2002 4.11 Media-storm webpage cover image of Rape of a Nation 4.12 Cover of Curse of The Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta 4.13 Photograph by Ed Kashi from Curse of The Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta 4.14 Photograph by Photocall, Ireland, July 2009 4.15 Portrait studio, Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia 6.1 Azerbaijani military expenditure in million USD (2008 constant) 6.2 Funding for IDP programmes over the State Oil Fund of the Republic of Azerbaijan (billion AZN) 7.1 Composition of urban employment 7.2 Average incomes (in multiples of the poverty line)
Acknowledgements

Your names are too many to mention, but we recognise with thanks all of the assistance and support that have been given to this project by the Norwegian Research Council, institutional partners, colleagues, family and the communities in which we have worked and lived. Only one individual name must be mentioned. Hanne, without you the inspiration for this book would never have been found.
Introduction

From allegories inside the oil economy. The hunter as warrior, oil storage tank under construction, Port Harcourt, Nigeria. Photograph by Owen Logan .
1
Rethinking Responsibility and Governance in Resource Extraction

Owen Logan and John-Andrew McNeish
In December 2009 Farouk al-Kasim was invited to give a seminar in Bergen. As a result of life’s vicissitudes, al-Kasim, an Iraqi petroleum geologist, had settled in Norway in 1968. He found employment first as consultant for the Ministry of Industry and then in the early 1970s helped create the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate (NPC), becoming its director of resource management. The NPC is often credited in policy circles as the key example of effective management of state and corporate interests in the petroleum business. As a result ‘the Norwegian model’ has become a byword for avoiding the negative effects of large-scale oil and gas production on a nation’s domestic markets and social fabric – an impact controversially captured in the hypothesis of ‘the resource curse’. Al-Kasim’s role in assisting the formation of Norway’s regulatory framework did not receive much attention until August 2009, when the London Financial Times published a profile article under the headline, ‘The Iraqi who saved Norway from oil’. 1
Al-Kasim’s role in Norway’s adaptation of the oil economy was of great interest to the audience at his seminar in Bergen. However, his experience and propositions about transparency and good governance did not go entirely unchallenged. Surely, it was asked by members of the audience, Norway’s success story was not due to the influence of a single enlightened technocrat, and was Norway’s governance of the petroleum economy really as transparent as al-Kasim implied? In answering these points al-Kasim humbly conceded that the development of NPC policy had always been conditioned by the possible reaction of the Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions.
The Scandinavian labour movement has a rich ideological history and retains considerable strength in Norway, something not mentioned in the Financial Times profile, which alluded to the national character of Norwegians, not their differences. When the radical complexity of civil society is acknowledged – and there does tend to be a great degree of historical forgetfulness about labour militancy in Scandinavia – the same factor also calls into question technocratic thought on transparency and good governance. While such virtues may be planned for, and drafted as rules and codes of conduct, a genuinely empowered labour movement is won, not managed into historical existence. Moreover, the forces arrayed against labour power can hardly be made transparent, at least in any technocratic sense, since the struggle for social justice is never conducted on a level playing field.
It is only quite recently that an adequate picture of Norway’s oil economy has come to light. New film documentaries, books and media articles in Norway have re-examined the past, in an effort to answer the question why in the space of 100 years Norway has gone from being one of the poorest to one of the richest countries in the world per capita. A key voice amongst these revisions has been the historical sociologist Helge Ryggvik, who has forcefully argued that ‘there is no single Norwegian oil experience’. 2 In concluding the English synopsis of earlier work, Ryggvik states that if there is a central lesson to be drawn from Norway, ‘it must be the presence and significance of conflict between oil actors and society, and the importance of society’s determination to secure its own power and position vis-à-vis the big companies’. 3
As Ryggvik explains, the dominant social-democratic attitude in Norwegian State policy was informed by an earlier contest over hydropower concessions, in which the state had managed to gain both control and technological know-how. The domination of the oil business by archetypal global corporations, the need to develop an off-shore indust