The Licit Life of Capitalism: US Oil in Equatorial Guinea (2019)

The Licit Life of Capitalism is both an account of a specific capitalist project—U.S. oil companies working off the shores of Equatorial Guinea—and a sweeping theorization of more general forms and processes that facilitate diverse capitalist projects around the world. Hannah Appel draws on extensive fieldwork with managers and rig workers, lawyers and bureaucrats, the expat wives of American oil executives and the Equatoguinean women who work in their homes, to turn conventional critiques of capitalism on their head, arguing that market practices do not merely exacerbate inequality; they are made by it. People and places differentially valued by gender, race, and colonial histories are the terrain on which the rules of capitalist economy are built. Appel shows how the corporate form and the contract, offshore rigs and economic theory are the assemblages of liberalism and race, expertise and gender, technology and domesticity that enable the licit life of capitalism—practices that are legally sanctioned, widely replicated, and ordinary, at the same time as they are messy, contested, and, arguably, indefensible. "In OIL AND THE LICIT LIFE OF CAPITALISM IN EQUATORIAL GUINEA Hannah Appel considers how oil extraction creates forms of legality and legitimacy that mask its historical relationship to imperialism and slavery in Equatorial Guinea. As a former Spanish colony whose oil industry has developed in the shadow of it's neighbor Nigeria's (and stories of Nigeria's "resource curse"), Equatorial Guinea provides an understudied example of capitalism's imbrication of itself in state formation through oil extraction. Rooted in anthropology's turn to the study of infrastructure as a way to analyze the interactions of people, things, and the state, Appel's account focuses on structures and procedures that have enabled oil extraction and the flourishing of capitalism from Spanish colonization to the present day. Focusing on processes unique to petrocapital, such as offshore drilling, as well as those that have their roots or most prominent forms there, such as the contract or subcontractual labor, Appel shows how capitalism is not just the context in which oil extraction takes place, but itself a project, something that must be constantly reinforced and remade. Appel shows how ethnography provides a vital method for understanding capitalism's everyday reassertion and recreation of its own power as something that must be made and remade every day."--Provided by publisher The Licit Life of Capitalism is both an account of a specific capitalist projectU.S. oil companies working off the shores of Equatorial Guineaand a sweeping theorization of more general forms and processes that facilitate diverse capitalist projects around the world. Hannah Appel draws on extensive fieldwork with managers and rig workers, lawyers and bureaucrats, the expat wives of American oil executives and the Equatoguinean women who work in their homes, to turn conventional critiques of capitalism on their head, arguing that market practices do not merely exacerbate inequality; they are made by it. People and places differentially valued by gender, race, and colonial histories are the terrain on which the rules of capitalist economy are built. Appel shows how the corporate form and the contract, offshore rigs and economic theory are the assemblages of liberalism and race, expertise and gender, technology and domesticity that enable the licit life of capitalism practices that are legally sanctioned, widely replicated, and ordinary, at the same time as they are messy, contested, and, arguably, indefensible. Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1 The Offshore 2 The Enclave 3 The Contract 4 The Subcontract 5 The Economy 6 The Political Afterword Notes References Index