Studies how oil has shaped the societies and cultures of the modern and contemporary Middle East Proposes a new research agenda for the study of oil's varied lives in the modern and contemporary Middle East Includes 13 case studies, including 2 photo essays by leading artists and designers Takes a thematic approach to promote interdisciplinary thinking Presents contributions from leading historians and anthropologists, world-renown artists, curators and designers, and younger scholars who are developing an outstanding research portfolio on oil This volume explores the ways petroleum as an industry and substance has moulded the social, cultural and artistic life of the Middle East. Rather than tackle the powers of this crucial resource from the perspective of macro-economics, impersonal rentier states and large corporations, this book 'brings oil back' into the ebbs and flows of Middle Eastern life. It focuses on the ways petroleum mediates and is mediated by national formations and imaginaries, visual practices, as well as scientific, business and artistic production. In focusing on the largest oil producing and exporting region in the world, this volume sheds light on the effects and affects of petroleum's presence within and beyond the oil-industry. Part 1 Exposing Oil sets out the main themes through which oil is analysed in the volume (visibility, experience, representation and mediation). Part 2 Oil Images deals with image making by the oil industry (as graphs, aerial photographs and promotional media) and by artists and designers who have engaged with, and commented on, oil's presence in the region. Part 3 Oil Subjects focuses on the production of (oil) subjecthood and the formation of oil knowledge.

About the Author
Nelida Fuccaro is Professor of Middle Eastern History at New York University Abu Dhabi. She has written on cities, public violence, frontier societies and on the urban, social, material and visual cultures of oil in the Persian Gulf, Iraq and Arabian Peninsula. Among her publications, she is the editor of Violence and the City in the Modern Middle East (Stanford University Press, 2016) and of the special issue 'Oil and Urban Modernity in the Middle East' in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East(2013). She is the author of Histories of City and State in the Persian Gulf: Manama since 1800 (Cambridge University Press, 2009).Mandana Limbert is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Queens College and the Graduate Center, CUNY. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology and Near Eastern Studies from the University of Michigan in 2002 and joined CUNY the same year. Her publications include her monograph In the Time of Oil (Stanford University Press, 2010), a co-edited volume Timely Assets (School of American Research, 2008), as well as articles and chapters on oil development, temporality, and religiosity in Oman. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including Social Text, Ethnos, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East, and the International Journal of Middle East Studies.

Reviews
"This groundbreaking collection of interdisciplinary essays is a major contribution to understanding the social life of oil in the Middle East. Rather than the usual and reductive focus on the geopolitics of oil or the impact of its financial revenues in enabling states and ruling elites, the contributors shed light on the many ways in which oil has shaped everyday social experience, covering topics from the ecology and the built environment of cities and nation states to the public imaginaries and the cultural and material lives of ordinary peoples. ?" -Kaveh Ehsani, DePaul University



Book Information
ISBN 9781399506144
Author Nelida Fuccaro
Format Hardback
Page Count 296
Imprint Edinburgh University Press
Publisher Edinburgh University Press