Doctoral Dissertation Research: A History of Oil Infrastructures: Commodity Production and Consumption

该奖项支持一个关于石油基础设施历史的博士论文研究项目，这意味着指定的社会技术组合，旨在运输石油，通过石油驱动的运输技术实现其他商品的交换，并吸收和引导来自石油的资本流动。该项目提出了三个核心问题：石油基础设施如何产生和塑造国家空间？基础设施如何重新分配代理并为政治项目注入动力？基础设施如何成为有争议的资本积累场所？基于最近对科学技术研究的贡献，本项目试图通过使用各种档案资源来研究六个石油基础设施项目来回答这些问题。研究人员计划将该项目的结果作为同行评审文章发表，他将把他的论文作为一本专著的初稿，供学术界、政策制定者和公众使用。他还计划利用这些成果在会议和同行评议的政策场所接触政策听众。这项关于石油基础设施的研究有望对科技研究的三个不同的子领域做出新的贡献：技术史、环境史和基础设施研究。它从传统的关注环境历史中的商品生产和消费以及采掘业的研究转向分析将石油工业联系在一起的能源、商品和资本的流动。它有意将物质流动和资本流动纳入同一分析框架，以便为历史上构成石油工业的社会技术网络提供更完整的说明，并更好地理解石油财富分配斗争的物质性。随着全球范围内脱碳的推进，围绕石油运输和精炼、促进石油动力贸易、吸收或引导石油财富流动的基础设施建设的空间，将需要面对这些基础设施所产生的势头和路径依赖，以及基础设施废弃和资本外逃迫在眉睫的前景。这项研究将帮助公民和政策制定者在历史上做出关于能源政策的明智决定。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award supports a doctoral dissertation research project on the history of infrastructures of oil, meaning the designate socio-technical assemblages designed to transport oil, to enable the exchange of other commodities via petroleum-powered transportation technologies, and to absorb and direct flows of capital derived from oil. The project asks three core questions: How do oil infrastructures produce and shape national space? How do infrastructures redistribute agency and imbue political projects with momentum? And how do infrastructures serve as contested sites of capital accumulation? Building on recent contributions to Science and Technology Studies, this project attempts to answer these questions using a diverse array of archival resources to examine six oil infrastructure projects. The researcher plans to publish the results of this project as peer-reviewed articles, and he will use his dissertation as the initial draft of a book monograph for academics, policymakers, and members of the general public. He also plans to use these results to reach out to policy audiences at conferences and in peer-reviewed policy venues.This research on oil infrastructures promises to make novel contributions to three distinct subfields of Science and Technology Studies: History of Technology, Environmental History, and Infrastructure Studies. It shifts from a conventional focus on commodity production and consumption within environmental history and studies of extractive industries toward an analysis of the flows of energy, commodities, and capital that tie together the oil industry. It intentionally brings material and capital flows into the same analytical frame in order to provide a more complete account of the socio-technical networks that historically constituted the oil industry, and to better understand the materiality of struggles over the distribution of oil wealth. As decarbonization advances worldwide, spaces built around infrastructures designed to transport and refine oil, facilitate petroleum-powered trade, and absorb or direct flows of oil wealth will need to confront the momentum and path dependency that such infrastructures have produced, as well as looming prospects of infrastructural abandonment and capital flight. This research will aid citizens and policymakers in making historically informed decisions about energy policy.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.