The crazy curse and crude domination: Toward an anthropology of oil

Oil has turned out to be something of a curse. Most developing petrostates have found that their economies have worsened, their political regimes have become more authoritarian, and their conflicts have intensified. Further, this curse is a bit crazy because oil brings wealth, which would seem to bring peace and prosperity, not the trouble that so often accompanies it. The goal of this introduction is to propose a research strategy for the anthropological analysis of oil. It does so by examining existing oil literatures, discussing the implications for research arising from the articles contained here, and, finally, formulating an anthropology of oil in a turbulent world. This formulation proposes a ‘crude domination’ approach to explain oil’s crazy curse.