Venezuela’s oil specter: Contextualizing and historicizing the Bolivarian attempt to sow the oil

Strønen, Iselin Åsedotter

doi:10.1080/02757206.2020.1762588

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 31 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…However, what is not discussed – instead it is trivialized – is how oil became under the Bolivarian Republic or al-Jamāhīrīyah a tool to achieve social and regional development (Capasso, 2020; Marquina and Gilbert, 2020). By reintroducing the concept of class and imperialism, these policies no longer appear as forms of crass populism or authoritarianism (Ellner, 2019), but they appear as a form of postcolonial resistance and reveal the serious efforts undertaken by these social formations to overcome underdevelopment through socialization of production (Petras and Veltmeyer, 2016), despite their numerous limitations (Marquina and Gilbert, 2020; Strønen, 2020).…”

Section: Bringing Imperialism Back Inmentioning

confidence: 99%

IR, imperialism, and the Global South: From Libya to Venezuela

Capasso

2021

Politics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article brings together two cases to contribute to the growing body of literature rethinking the study of international relations (IR) and the Global South: The Libyan Arab al-Jamāhīrīyah and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Drawing on media representations and secondary literature from IR and international political economy (IPE), it critically examines three main conceptual theses (authoritarian, rentier, and rogue) used to describe the historical socio-political formations of these states up to this date. Mixing oil abundance with authoritarian revolutionary fervour and foreign policy adventurism, Libya and Venezuela have been progressively reduced to the figure of one man, while presenting their current crises as localized processes delinked from the imperialist inter-state system. The article argues that these analyses, if left unquestioned, perpetuate a US-led imperial ordering of the world, while foreclosing and discrediting alternatives to capitalist development emerging from and grounded in a Global South context. In doing so, the article contributes to the growing and controversial debate on the meanings and needs for decolonizing the study of IR.

show abstract