Resource Curse in the Global North: The role of oil revenues in the formation of the Albertan conservative assemblage

迄今为止，对石油开采的人类学研究特别侧重于发展中国家和土著世界。道格拉斯·罗杰斯指出，石油与土著人民之间的关系已经得到了很好的研究（罗杰斯2015:366）。更具体地说，许多以发展中国家为中心的分析都集中在资源诅咒的观点上。例如，Behrends（2008）研究了即使石油开采只是一种未来的可能性，苏丹和乍得之间的边界仍然可能发生冲突。与此同时，特里·林恩·卡尔（1997）对那些现代制度在石油收入进入舞台之前就已经出现的政治体制和那些石油“压倒”新兴制度、造成资源诅咒的政治体制进行了分析分离。这一假设引发了来自第三世界的民族志数据对这一概念的批评。Weszkalnys（2011）探讨了第一世界对资源诅咒思想的接受是如何导致新自由主义试图以先发制人和防止新的资源诅咒的名义干预《<s:1>普林西比》的。现有的石油人类学因此证明了一种普遍的新自由主义假设，即资源诅咒不是第一世界的疾病，强大的制度是一个关键的预防因素。出于这个原因，我想对加拿大阿尔伯塔省进行研究，这是一个第一世界石油国家，在新自由主义治理的支持下，资源诅咒的一些影响已经出现：保守政党手中的政治权力垄断，财富不平等扩大，腐败，环境恶化，不可持续的财政慷慨，以及荷兰病，根据Behrends等人（2011）的说法，这是“资源诅咒的放大”。虽然不是一个完全成熟的资源诅咒，但我仍然认为重要的是要警告第一世界对资源诅咒免疫的假设可能是种族中心主义和误导，特别是考虑到阿尔伯塔省的悠久历史和最近右翼的复苏，经济上自由的民粹主义，以及就在边境以南，美国许多最重要的石油产区也是唐纳德特朗普的选举中心。因此，石油收入对第一世界中保守派领导的民主倒退的影响是一个紧迫的研究重点，尤其是因为阿尔伯塔省和美国保守派在气候变化问题上的否认立场。因此，我的目标是研究石油收入对选举的影响，以及石油开采与保守政治形态之间的联系，并对我们对石油依赖的理解以及由此产生的保守派对气候政策的抵制进行分析。

Anthropological study of oil extraction has hitherto placed particular focus on the developing and indigenous worlds. Douglas Rogers notes that the relationship between oil and indigenous peoples has been particularly well studied (Rogers 2015: 366). More specifically, many developing world-centred analyses have focused on the resource curse idea. For instance, Behrends (2008) has examined how even when oil extraction is but a future possibility, conflict can still ensue on the border between Sudan and Chad. Meanwhile, Terry Lynn Karl (1997) establishes an analytical separation between those political regimes where modern institutions had emerged prior to the entry of oil revenues onto the scene, and those where oil "overwhelmed" emerging institutions, creating a resource curse. This assumption has led to critiques of this notion using ethnographic data from the third world. Weszkalnys (2011) explores how first world acceptance of the resource curse idea results in neoliberal attempts to intervene in São Tomé e Principe in the name of pre-empting and preventing new resource curses. Existing anthropology of oil has thus documented a widespread neoliberal assumption that resource curses are not a disease of the first world, and that strong institutions are a key preventative factor. For this reason, I would like to conduct research into Alberta, Canada a first world petrostate where some of the effects of a resource curse have appeared under the auspices of neoliberal governance: the monopolization of political power in the hands of conservative parties, widening wealth inequality, corruption, environmental degradation, unsustainable fiscal largesse, as well as Dutch disease, which according to Behrends et. al. (2011) is "an amplification of the resource curse". Though not a fully-fledged resource curse, I still think it important to warn that the assumption of first world immunity to resource curses may be both ethnocentric and misguided, particularly given Alberta's long history and recent resurgence of right-wing, economically liberal populism, and that just south of the border, many of the USA's most important oil producing regions are also Donald Trump's electoral heartlands. The implications of oil revenues for conservative-led democratic backsliding in first world contexts are therefore an urgent research focus, not least because of the denialist position of Albertan and US conservatives on climate change. I aim therefore to study the electoral implications of oil revenues, and the association between oil extraction and conservative political formations, with analytical consequences for our understanding of oil dependency and the resultant conservative resistance to climate policy.