Dissertation Research: Anglo-Persian Oil and the Making of Modern Iran, 1901-1953

本文通过对1901年至1953年英国控制的伊朗石油工业的研究，对现代中东政治进行了反思。国家科学基金会将资助对政府和商业档案的研究，以研究有关石油勘探、产权、劳工组织、地质知识、会计方法、石油分配以及利润的计算和控制的一系列争端和危机。目的是了解自然、技术和政治之间的相互作用如何重新配置石油地区的当地政治，以及这些因素如何反过来塑造民族国家和跨国石油公司的出现。英国在伊朗的石油工业是世界上最早也是最大的海外石油业务之一。公司经理、石油工程师和石油工人面临着前所未有的技术挑战，形成了新的金融和社会安排，并通过一系列危机，帮助塑造了现代伊朗的政治。伊朗或中东任何其他国家的现有历史都没有与石油开发密切相关。在科学技术研究的文献中，除了Geoffrey Bowker（1998）对一家法国石油服务公司的调查外，没有研究现代石油工业发展的学术研究。这个项目的目的不仅是提供中东石油生产的技术历史，而且是对石油和政治如何相互作用的研究。它建立在科学技术研究传统的基础上，挑战了技术研究与社会经济研究之间的分工。其目的不是为了更好地理解技术与社会之间的关系，将两者作为独立的领域，而是将历史和政治视为社会技术过程。如果不认真考虑其技术层面，就无法充分了解中东或世界上任何产油地区的政治。同样，只有从塑造石油世界的历史和政治力量的角度，才能正确地理解石油技术世界。中东的石油政治是一个当代备受关注的话题。人们普遍认为，一个享有大量石油收入的国家在经济发展和建立民主政治形式方面面临着不同寻常的挑战。然而，人们对这种石油诅咒的原因知之甚少。这是因为对石油的研究通常只考虑其财政收入及其影响。采用社会技术方法将产生新的理解，通过将与石油相关的权力关系、劳工斗争、技术控制、金融安排和财产制度的形式纳入视野。因此，提出的研究将提供一种思考石油政治经济学和中东现代政治的新方法。

This Dissertation Improvement Grant in the History of Science and Technology rethinks the politics of the modern Middle East, through a study of the British-controlled oil industry in Iran from 1901 to 1953. NSF support will fund research in governmental and business archives in order to examine a series of disputes and crises concerning petroleum exploration, property rights, the organization of labor, geological knowledge, accounting methods, oil distribution, and the calculation and control of profits. The goal is to understand how interactions between nature, technology, and politics reconfigured the local politics of the oil regions and how these in turn shaped the emergence of both the national state and the multinational oil corporation. The British oil industry in Iran was one of the world's first and largest overseas oil operations. Company managers, petroleum engineers, and oil workers faced unprecedented technical challenges, forged new financial and social arrangements, and, through a series of crises, helped shape the politics of the modern state of Iran. No existing history of Iran, or of any other country in the Middle East, deals closely with the development of oil. In the literature of Science and Technology Studies research, with the exception of Geoffrey Bowker's (1998) investigation of a French oil services company, there is no scholarship that examines the development of the modern oil industry. This project aims to provide not just a technical history of oil production in the Middle East, but a study of how oil and politics interact. It builds on the tradition in Science and Technology studies research that challenges the division of labor between studies of technology on one side and studies of society and the economy on the other. The intention is not to better understand relations between technology and society, leaving the two as separate spheres, but to approach history and politics as socio-technical processes. The politics of the Middle East or any oil producing region of the world cannot be understood adequately without taking seriously its technical dimensions. Likewise, the technical world of oil can be understood properly only in terms of the historical and political forces through which that world has been shaped. The politics of oil in the Middle East is a topic of great contemporary concern. It is generally accepted that a country that enjoys large oil revenues faces unusual challenges in economic development and in creating democratic forms of politics. Yet the reasons for this oil curse are poorly understood. This is because oil is typically studied only in terms of its financial revenues and their impact. Taking a socio-technical approach will produce new kinds of understanding, by bringing into view the forms of power relations, labor struggles, technical controls, financial arrangements, and property regimes that develop in relation to oil. Thus the proposed research will offer a new way to think about both the political economy of oil and the modern politics of the Middle East.