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. Drawing on bottom-up research and theoretical reflection the authors question 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.

This book offers valuable material for students and researchers concerned with politics, inequality and poverty in resource-rich countries. Among the key critical issues the book highlights is the need to understand the politics of social territorialism as a response to exclusionary geopolitics.

John-Andrew McNeish is Associate Professor at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences and Senior Researcher at the Chr. Michelsens Institute. He is the project leader of the Norwegian Research Council funded project 'Flammable Societies: The Role of the Oil and Gas Industry in the Promotion of Poverty Reduction and Social Volatility' on which the book Flammable Societies is based.

Owen Logan is a photographer and writer and a Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen where he worked with the Lives in the Oil Industry oral history project. His work has been exhibited and published widely and is in the art collection of the Scottish Parliament. He is a contributing editor to Variant magazine.

Introduction

• Rethinking Responsibility and Governance in Resource Extraction
  by Owen Logan & John-Andrew McNeish

Part 1 Resource Sovereignties

• On Curses and Devils: Resource Wealth and Sovereignty in an Autonomous Tarija, Bolivia
• by John-Andrew McNeish
• A Contribution to the Critique of Post-Imperial British history - North Sea oil, Scottish Nationalism and Thatcherite Neoliberalism
  by Terry Brotherstone
• Where Pathos Rules: the Resource Curse in Visual Culture
  by Owen Logan

Part 2 States of Collective Consumption

• Development from Below and Oil Money from Above: Popular Organisation in Contemporary Venezuela
  by Iselin Åsedotter Strønen
• Living Under the Bullet: Internal Displacement in the Azerbaijani Oil Boom
  by Heidi Kjærnet
• The Socio-Economic Dynamics of Gas in Bolivia
  by Fernanda Wanderley, Leila Mokrani, Alice Guimarães
• Subsidised Energy and Hesitant Elites in Russia
  by Indra Overland and Hilde Kutschera

Part 3. Supply Side Governmentality

• North Sea Oil, the State and Divergent Development in the UK and Norway
  by Andrew Cumbers
• A Country without a State? Governmentality, Knowledge and Labour in Nigeriam
  by Femi Folorunso, Philippa Hall, Owen Logan
• The Race to the Bottom and the Demise of the Landlord: The Struggle over Petroleum Revenues Historically and Comparatively
  by Anna Zalik
• Law’s Role in the Tension between Security and Sovereignty in the Field of Energy Resources
  by John Paterson
• Fossil Knowledge: Networks, Industry Strategy, Public Culture, and the Challenge for Critical Research
  by Bret Gustafson

Conclusion

• All Other Things Do Not Remain Equal
  by John-Andrew McNeish & Owen Logan

Contributors
Index