SBE Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant - Crude Fictions: Oil and the Making of Modularity in Equatorial Guinea

研究生汉娜·阿佩尔将在詹姆斯·弗格森博士的指导下，研究新的石油出口国在社会、政治和经济上变得与其他石油出口国一样的标准化过程。模块化这个术语指的是这一过程：社会、政治和经济努力，以创造特定于石油出口国的等价性和可公度性形式。她将在中非赤道几内亚进行研究，赤道几内亚在过去六年中获得了100亿美元的石油相关投资，现在是非洲第三大石油生产国。研究人员将调查三个不同领域的标准化：标准石油技术的使用；石油收入对当地政治的影响；以及东道国和投资者国家和公司之间的关系。她将在赤道几内亚进行为期18个月的实地考察。她的方法包括对一家在赤道几内亚运营的美国石油公司进行机构人种学研究；对300名与该行业有关的人进行调查；绘制社会空间图；以及深入采访。虽然其他人已经观察到模块化的存在，但这项研究将是第一批考察模块化所实现的过程和活动的研究之一。石油被广泛理解为世界上最有利可图和最重要的行业，离不开最大形式的跨国资本。2006年，美国从非洲进口的石油超过了从中东进口的石油。非洲通常不被认为是全球资本流动的中心。基于对这一现象的地理核心的研究，该项目旨在促进关于采掘业的研究、发展研究、经济转型的民族志研究以及关于全球进程中的物质和意识形态标准化的辩论。这项研究还将对社会科学家的教育做出重大贡献。

Graduate student Hannah Appel, supervised by Dr. James Ferguson, will undertake research on the standardization process by which new oil exporting countries become socially, politically, and economically like other oil-exporting states. The term modularity refers to this process: the social, political, and economic effort to create forms of equivalence and commensurability specific to oil-exporting states. She will carry out her research in the central African state of Equatorial Guinea, which has seen 10 billion dollars in petroleum-related investment over the last six years, and is now Africa's third largest oil producer. The researcher will investigate standardization in three different domains: the use of standard oil technologies; the effects of petroleum income on local politics; and the relationships between the host and investor countries and corporations. She will conduct eighteen months of fieldwork in Equatorial Guinea. Her mixed-methods approach with include an institutional ethnography of an American petroleum corporation operating in Equatorial Guinea; a survey of 300 people connected to the industry; socio-spatial mappings; and in-depth interviews. While others have observed the existence of modularity, this study will be one of the first to examine the processes and activities by it is achieved.Petroleum is widely understood to be the most lucrative and important industry in the world, inseparable from the largest forms of transnational capital. In 2006, the United States imported more oil from Africa--a continent not often considered central to global capital flows--than it did from the Middle East. Based on research in the geographic core of this phenomenon, this project aims to contribute to research on extractive industries, development studies, ethnography of economic transformation, and debates on material and ideological standardization in global processes. The research also will contribute significantly to the education of a social scientist.