Description:
- Deeply ethnographic
- New "domination" theoretical approach
- Geographically broad (Africa, Latin America, Eurasia)
- Examines global/local connections in novel manner
Brief description:
Günther Schlee is a Director of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. He is author of How Enemies are Made and Identities on the Move among other books.
Review Quotes:
"This book is chiefly valuable for the nuanced, in-depth reporting of the cases, especially the violent ones. Valuable for scholars of resource conflict, and necessary reading for anyone deeply researching oil politics." - Choice
"Here is anthropology at its critical and relevant best. Nothing could be more topical than the role of oil in contemporary global turmoil and "the crazy curse" that it casts over all manner of human endeavour and hope. The essays in this important book offer major insights into the heart of the crisis of capital and the local cultural phantasmagoria expressing its cruel paradoxes. The ethnographic analyses expand important arguments in other disciplines (especially economics and political science) and demonstrate the valuable necessity of anthropological perspectives. This is a must read for anthropologists and those in other disciplines who are concerned with the dynamics of global power as this is exposed in the struggle over the control of scarce resources and its tragic human effects." - Bruce Kapferer, University of Bergen