Histories of Capitalism and Race: Environment and Infrastructure in the Middle East and Beyond seminar series

Prof. Laleh Khalili (University of Exeter) will give a keynote lecture entitled Crude Knowledge: Resource Sovereignty and Hydrocarbon Savoir Faire.

Registration is required.

Abstract:

The period of struggle over hydrocarbon sovereignty in the Arab world – the 1950s-1970s – saw a spate of periodicals in Arabic about oil. These included periodicals produced by the public relations departments of Euro-American oil companies, as well as monthlies, weeklies and quarterlies produced by Arab journalists, experts, and former oil revolutionaries in Cairo, Baghdad, Beirut and Kuwait. This lecture argues that the trajectory of these latter publications – both their context and content – traces the massive political transformations that saw a shift of power in the region, alongside a radical transformation in the representation of oil from a public good into a private property.