Working for Oil

This volume looks at the social history of oil workers to investigate how labor relations and experiences have shaped the emergence of this global extractive industry. Three inter-related themes are investigated by scholars: the political life of labor, the productive life of labor, and the urban and social life of labor. Compiled here is the work of scholars from a range of disciplines who situate labor and the social, political, and cultural dimensions of oil at the center of their analysis. In this comparative study, the historical and contemporary experiences of oil workers are analyzed from a number of key oil producing regions, including Latin America, the Middle East, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Europe and Africa.

Touraj Atabaki is Senior Researcher at the International Institute of Social History at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science. He also holds the chair of the Social History of the Middle East and Central Asia at the School of the Middle East Studies of the Leiden University, The Netherlands. Elisabetta Bini is Resarch Fellow at the University of Trieste, Italy. Her current research revolves around the history of international oil politics, in particular in the ways in which oil politics shaped relations between North Africa, Western Europe, and the United States after World War Two. Kaveh Ehsani is Assistant Porfessor of International Studies at DePaul University, USA. His fields of interest include urban geography, critical social theory, and the political economy of development projects and their social and environmental repercussions. He is a regular media commentator and analyst on Iranian politics.

Introduction, Touraj Atabaki, Elisabetta Bini, Kaveh Ehsani.- THE POLITICAL LIFE OF OIL.- Invisible Work: Why is the Role of Labor in Oil Missing from the Literature?; Kaveh Ehsani.- The Zero-Sum Game of Early Oil Extraction Relations in Colombia: Workers, Tropical Oil, and the Police State, 1918-1938; Stefano Tijerina.- Tapline, Welfare Industrialism, and Mass Mobilization in Lebanon, 1950-1964; Zachary Cuyler.- Power of the Possible: Oil Workers and Dual Power in the Iranian Revolution, 1978-1982; Peyman Jafari.- Norwegian Oil Workers: From Rebels to Partners in a Tripartite System; Helge Ryggvik.- The Role of Labor in Transforming Nigerian Oil Politics; Andrew Lawrence.- The Political Life of Oil and Labour under the Citizens' Revolution in Ecuador; Gabriela Valdivia.- THE PRODUCTIVE LIFE OF OIL.- Far from Home, but at Home: Indian Migrant Workers in the Iranian Oil Industry; Touraj Atabaki.- Wildcat: Outsourcing, Expertise, and Oil in Postwar Houston; Betsy A. Beasley.- Pricing Labor in State-led Privatization: a Case Study of the Chinese Oil Industry; Kun-Chin Lin.- Cat Crackers and Picket Lines: Organized Labour in US Labour Gulf Coast Refineries; Tyler Priest.- THE SOCIAL AND URBAN LIFE OF OIL.- Building an Oil Empire: Labor and Gender Relations in American Company Towns in Libya, 1950s-1970s; Elisabetta Bini.- Heroic "Black Gold"? Working for Oil and Gas in Western Siberia during the 1960s and 1970s; Dunja Krempin.- The Tengiz Oil Enclave: Labor, Business, and the State; Saulesh Yessenova.- Doubly Invisible: Women's Labour in the US Gulf of Mexico Offshore Oil and Gas Industry; Diane Austin.