Working for Oil

Touraj Atabaki is Senior Researcher at the International Institute of Social History at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science. He also holds the chair of the Social History of the Middle East and Central Asia at the School of the Middle East Studies of the Leiden University, The Netherlands.Elisabetta Bini is Resarch Fellow at the University of Trieste, Italy. Her current research revolves around the history of international oil politics, in particular in the ways in which oil politics shaped relations between North Africa, Western Europe, and the United States after World War Two.Kaveh Ehsani is Assistant Porfessor of International Studies at DePaul University, USA. His fields of interest include urban geography, critical social theory, and the political economy of development projects and their social and environmental repercussions. He is a regular media commentator and analyst on Iranian politics.

• Introduction, Touraj Atabaki, Elisabetta Bini, Kaveh Ehsani.- THE POLITICAL LIFE OF OIL.- Invisible Work: Why is the Role of Labor in Oil Missing from the Literature?; Kaveh Ehsani.- The Zero-Sum Game of Early Oil Extraction Relations in Colombia: Workers, Tropical Oil, and the Police State, 1918-1938; Stefano Tijerina.- Tapline, Welfare Industrialism, and Mass Mobilization in Lebanon, 1950-1964; Zachary Cuyler.- Power of the Possible: Oil Workers and Dual Power in the Iranian Revolution, 1978-1982; Peyman Jafari.- Norwegian Oil Workers: From Rebels to Partners in a Tripartite System; Helge Ryggvik.- The Role of Labor in Transforming Nigerian Oil Politics; Andrew Lawrence.- The Political Life of Oil and Labour under the Citizens’ Revolution in Ecuador; Gabriela Valdivia.- THE PRODUCTIVE LIFE OF OIL.- Far from Home, but at Home: Indian Migrant Workers in the Iranian Oil Industry; Touraj Atabaki.- Wildcat: Outsourcing, Expertise, and Oil in Postwar Houston; Betsy A. Beasley.- Pricing Labor in State-led Privatization: a Case Study of the Chinese Oil Industry; Kun-Chin Lin.- Cat Crackers and Picket Lines: Organized Labour in US Labour Gulf Coast Refineries; Tyler Priest.- THE SOCIAL AND URBAN LIFE OF OIL.- Building an Oil Empire: Labor and Gender Relations in American Company Towns in Libya, 1950s-1970s; Elisabetta Bini.- Heroic “Black Gold”? Working for Oil and Gas in Western Siberia during the 1960s and 1970s; Dunja Krempin.- The Tengiz Oil Enclave: Labor, Business, and the State; Saulesh Yessenova.- Doubly Invisible: Women’s Labour in the US Gulf of Mexico Offshore Oil and Gas Industry; Diane Austin.

“The book’s objective is to show some of the diversity of labour relations in the sector, rather than be comprehensive, and in this it succeeds. … Working for Oil is a valuable and distinctive addition to research on the evolution of the global oil industry, and will be of interest to anyone who cares about industrial relations and the agency of labour in this sector.” (Gavin Bridge, Journal of Industrial Relations, Vol. 61 (2), April, 2019)