Standardized capitalism? Negotiating the oil industry’s dis/entanglement in Niger and Uganda

An ethnography of public events: Reformulating the extended case method in contemporary social theory

“…Moreover, comparing failing Western governmentality to largely succeeding Chinese soft power in Niger that combines infrastructural development with a rhetoric of non-interference, I argued that recent developments in Niger cannot be sufficiently understood using simplistic notions of neoliberalism as the single, global capitalist force shaping the world. Rather, I showed that -still in a somehow simplistic way -different capitalisms are at work although in overlapping, at times competing and at times cooperating forms: a Western neoliberal capitalism and a Chinese state capitalism (Schritt, 2016b;Schritt and Witte, 2018). Understanding the particular properties of these capitalisms helps lay bare the varying economic, political and socio-cultural transformation processes induced by their dis/entanglements with the Nigerien context and reveals how their articulations with local elements lead to the emergence of a complex and unique socio-political configuration (Schritt, 2016a;2016b).…”

Making Cultural Heritage Claims on Profitable Land: The Case of the Ngassa Wells in Uganda’s Oil Region

“… 9. CSR and financialisation have been embraced by the oil industry, more particularly, Tullow Oil, which is heavily dependent on international financial markets (Witte, 2018: 202). CSR is also relevant as part of oil companies’ “dis/entanglement” from/with the oil producing countries (see Schritt and Witte, 2018). Tullow Oil had CSR programmes in Uganda that included employing Ugandan workers (under so-called national or local content) and it followed a rather old-fashioned philanthropic approach of building infrastructure like schools and boreholes in communities close to oil exploration activities (Schritt and Witte, 2018; Witte, 2018: 186–189). …”