Seeing Like an Oil Company: Space, Security, and Global Capital in Neoliberal Africa
Seeing Like an Oil Company: Space, Security, and Global Capital in Neoliberal Africa
复制标题
像石油公司一样看待:新自由主义非洲的空间、安全和全球资本
DOI:
10.1525/aa.2005.107.3.377
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发表时间:
2005
影响因子:
3.5
通讯作者:
J. Ferguson
中科院分区:
文献类型:
--
作者:
J. Ferguson
In this article, I seek to identify a limitation in the analysis James Scott offers in Seeing Like a State (1998) by asking to what extent his account of the follies of schemes for planned improvement by states provides critical leverage on the present world of neoliberal global capitalism. Scott has claimed that a dynamic of standardization, homogenization, and grid making applies not only to developmentalist states but also equally to the contemporary world of downsized states and unconstrained global corporations. I contest that claim by tracing how recent capital investment in Africa has been territorialized, and some of the new forms of order and disorder that have accompanied that selectively territorialized investment. Because such investment has been overwhelmingly in mineral resource extraction—particularly in oil—a contrast will become visible between the homogenizing, standardizing state optic Scott analyzed and a rather different way of seeing, proper to the contemporary global oil company.