Working for Oil Comparative Social Histories of Labor in the Global Oil Industry

This volume examines the social history of oil workers and investigates how labor relations have shaped the global oil industry during the twentieth century and today. It brings together the work of scholars from a range of disciplines, approaching the social, political, economic and cultural dimensions of oil. The contributors analyze a number of key oil producing regions, including the Americas, the Middle East, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Europe and Africa.

Introduction, Touraj Atabaki, Elisabetta Bini, Kaveh Ehsani.- THE POLITICAL LIFE OF OIL.- Invisible Work: Why is the Role of Labor in Oil Missing from the Literature?; Kaveh Ehsani.- The Zero-Sum Game of Early Oil Extraction Relations in Colombia: Workers, Tropical Oil, and the Police State, 1918-1938; Stefano Tijerina.- Tapline, Welfare Industrialism, and Mass Mobilization in Lebanon, 1950-1964; Zachary Cuyler.- Power of the Possible: Oil Workers and Dual Power in the Iranian Revolution, 1978-1982; Peyman Jafari.- Norwegian Oil Workers: From Rebels to Partners in a Tripartite System; Helge Ryggvik.- The Role of Labor in Transforming Nigerian Oil Politics; Andrew Lawrence.- The Political Life of Oil and Labour under the Citizens’ Revolution in Ecuador; Gabriela Valdivia.- THE PRODUCTIVE LIFE OF OIL.- Far from Home, but at Home: Indian Migrant Workers in the Iranian Oil Industry; Touraj Atabaki.- Wildcat: Outsourcing, Expertise

Touraj Atabaki is Senior Researcher at the International Institute of Social History at the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science. He also holds the chair of the Social History of the Middle East and Central Asia at the School of the Middle East Studies of the Leiden University, The Netherlands.

Elisabetta Bini is Resarch Fellow at the University of Trieste, Italy. Her current research revolves around the history of international oil politics, in particular in the ways in which oil politics shaped relations between North Africa, Western Europe, and the United States after World War Two.

Kaveh Ehsani is Assistant Porfessor of International Studies at DePaul University, USA. His fields of interest include urban geography, critical social theory, and the political economy of development projects and their social and environmental repercussions. He is a regular media commentator and analyst on Iranian politics.