Crude Domination

Four conjectures relate the prospect of conflict to oil. First, petroleum production integrates local, regional, national, and global levels of political and economic organization. Second, conflict is likely in these forms of integration, especially under conditions of oil scarcity. Third, oil production in the near future is subject to declining supply and increased demand. Fourth, this means that a looming crisis of oil threatens global integration with violence. Therefore, an urgent social science research priority is the investigation of the nexus between oil, integration, and conflict. Tackling these issues in three different world regions - Africa, Latin America, and Russia - this volume assesses the current state of knowledge concerning oil, integration, and conflict and formulates an anthropological research strategy to advance an understanding of oil and its vicissitudes. Offering a strategy for a global anthropology of oil, this volume strengthens the ability of social science to explain and design policy in a world experiencing a global oil crisis.

Andrea Behrends is an Assistant Professor in Anthropology at the University of Halle-Wittenberg and former Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. She has done extensive research on regional conflict and integration, specializing on the Chad–Sudan border. Her publications include a book on Northern Ghanaian elite women and a number of articles.

Stephen Reyna is a Researcher at the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute of the University of Manchester, UK as well as a Research Associate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. He is founder and the first editor of the journal Anthropological Theory, was editor of the War and Society Monograph Series, and a member of the editorial boards of Reviews in Anthropology and Focaal. His many publications cover all areas of social anthropology.

Gunther Schlee is a Director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology where he leads a department with researchers working on integration and conflict. He is the author and editor of many books and numerous articles, editor of Zeitschrift fur Ethnologie, the oldest German scholarly journal of anthropology, and member of the editorial board of Nomadic Peoples.