Full Description
This volume explores the ways petroleum as an industry and substance has moulded the social, cultural and artistic life of the Middle East. Rather than tackle the powers of this crucial resource from the perspective of macro-economics, impersonal rentier states and large corporations, this book 'brings oil back' into the ebbs and flows of Middle Eastern life. It focuses on the ways petroleum mediates and is mediated by national formations and imaginaries, visual practices, as well as scientific, business and artistic production. In focusing on the largest oil producing and exporting region in the world, this volume sheds light on the effects and affects of petroleum's presence within and beyond the oil-industry.
Contents
List of Figures Notes on Contributors Acknowledgements
PART I EXPOSING OIL1 Scouting for Oil in the Middle East Nelida Fuccaro and Mandana E. Limbert2 'No Words Around to Describe': Between Seeing and Comprehending Kuwait's Oil Fires Farah Al-NakibPART II IMAGE WORLDSVISUALISING PETROLEUM PASTS3 Photographing Crude in the Desert: Sight and Sense among Oil Men Laura Hindelang4 The Oil Company's Fields of Vision: Public Relations and Labour Images in the Arab World Nelida Fuccaro5 Al-Bahithun: Sounds that Call to the (Oil) FieldsAla YounisPROJECTING FUTURES6 Empathy for the Graph Arthur Mason7 After Oil Rania GhosnPART III OIL SUBJECTSECOLOGIES AND GENEALOGIES OF PETROLEUM KNOWLEDGE8 Speculative Matters: The Pasts and Presents of Oil in TurkeyZeynep Oguz9 Petroprotein Dreams: Hydrocarbon Biotechnology and Microbial Life Worlds in the Middle EastDouglas Rogers10 Making Oil Men: Expertise, Discipline and Subjectivity in the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company's Training Schemes Mattin BiglariNEW SPACES AND MOBILITIES11 Shifting Solidarities: Strikes, Indian Labour and the Arabian Sea Oil Industry, 1946-1953Andrea Wright12 Gender, Domesticity and Speed: American Petro-modernity Nathan J. Citino 13 Oil, Mobility and Territoriality in the Trucial States/United Arab Emirates, Muscat and Oman Matthew MacLean14 Contestation and Co-optation in the Desert Landscapes of Oman Dawn Chatty
Bibliography Index
