Nationalising Oil and Knowledge in Iran

Labour, Decolonisation and Colonial Modernity, 1933–51

Inbunden, Engelska, 2025

Av Mattin Biglari, University of Bristol) Biglari, Mattin (Lecturer

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Iran's nationalisation of oil in 1951 was a key catalyst for the rise of resource nationalism as an animating force of global decolonisation, expelling the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC, now known as BP) after nearly fifty years of domination in southwest Iran. Nationalising Oil & Knowledge in Iran turns attention to the origins of nationalisation in the everyday struggles between the oil company and subaltern actors in the city of Abadan, then home to the world's largest oil refinery and deeply imbricated in networks of colonialism and racial capitalism. Engaging with energy history, postcolonial/subaltern studies, and science & technology studies, the book focuses on the politics of expertise: how nationalisation reproduced the epistemic coloniality of the oil company, which rested on local dispossession, social engineering, as well as racial and gendered segregation. It argues that nationalisation diverged from subaltern contestations of oil expertise in Abadan, which presented a more fundamental challenge to colonial modernity.

Produktinformation

Utgivningsdatum2025-02-28
Mått156 x 234 x 25 mm
Vikt638 g
FormatInbunden
SpråkEngelska
SerieEdinburgh Historical Studies of Iran and the Persian World
Antal sidor336
FörlagEdinburgh University Press
ISBN9781474489607

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List of FiguresIntroduction: The Coloniality of Oil and Knowledge in Iran1. Refining Knowledge: Building the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company and the Abadan Refinery2. The City of Oil: Social Reproduction, Infrastructure and Anticolonial Resistance in Abadan3. The ‘Character’ of Engineering: Training, Subjectivity and Knowledge Production in the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company4. The City of Science: Labour, Epistemic Struggle and Everyday Politics in the Abadan Refinery, 1946-19515. Expertise, Resource Nationalism and the Paradoxes of Oil Nationalisation in Iran6. Nationalisation from Below: The 1951 General StrikeEpilogue: Nationalised Oil and the Paradoxes of DecolonisationBibliographyIndex

A brilliantly argued and painstakingly researched investigation into the intersection of oil’s material politics and subaltern histories of decolonisation that challenges the methodological nationalism that has characterised much of the modern historiography of Iran. Biglari’s multi-layered and globally connected account of Iran’s struggles over oil knowledge reaches out far and wide, providing food for thought to scholars and students of the post-colony and the international oil industry.