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Oil and Social Change in Niger and Chad: An Anthropological Cooperative Research Project on Technologies, Signification and Processes of Creative Adaption in Relation to African Oil Production

Applicant Professor Dr. Nikolaus Schareika, since 10/2016
Subject Area Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology
African, American and Oceania Studies
Empirical Social Research
Term from 2011 to 2020
Project identifier Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 179999561
 
Final Report Year 2019

Final Report Abstract

The project on oil and social change in Niger and Chad contributed to our understanding of processes of change in emerging oil producers. The moment in time of Niger and Chad becoming new oil producers was used as an opportunity to conduct an ethnographic and anthropological approach to oil production by focusing on transformation processes in real‐time and on actual sites where these transformations could be observed. The collected data was then used for internal comparison and generalization as well as for theoretical advancement of key concepts of the SPP 1448. The main objectives of the project were reflected in three work packages. The first package was aimed at gaining original empirical findings as basis for theoretical advancement. This included five sub‐packages, which looked at the topics of central governance, conflict, the emergence of oil communities, local politics and the transformation of rural livelihoods. The second work package sought to advance trans‐disciplinary and inter‐institutional theory building by engaging in all three clusters of the priority program (significations, technology and space). Finally, the third work package had the training and capacity building of African research institutions and the facilitation of academic careers as its targets. With regard to work package 1, the empirical findings, we would like to highlight five major insights we gained from our ethnographic approach to the field of oil. First, we argue that oil production must be analyzed in the context of pre‐existing political and social structures to understand both oil’s peculiarity and its particular transformative potential. We developed the notion of ‘resource‐political configurations’ to emphasize how travelling elements of oil production connect with economic, social, cultural and political elements in the contexts of their arrival. Oil does not instantaneously change pre‐existing configurations but rather acts incrementally. In oil’s immediate presence, political conflicts are not so much newly created but first of all framed in the language of oil. Second, we refute deterministic claims of oil as a source of conflict. We argue that political contestation should be viewed comprehensively with attention to how the materiality, infrastructure and socio‐technical arrangements of oil articulate within particular pre‐existing regimes of domination and signification. Third, we found that a high inflation of oil money brought about fundamental socio‐cultural changes in extractive communities in Chad triggering processes of monetization of social relations such as marriage, kinship and political alliances with a decried ‘loss of culture.’ In Niger, however, the geographical site of the oil infrastructure did not lend itself to such massive changes due to a considerably lower influx of oil money and a more hostile natural environment for spontaneous settlements. Forth, we discovered that an important difference to Western oil producers was the presence of Chinese companies that enabled rather than limiting linkages from local economies to the oil industry. Fifth, we found local political arenas forming around the oil in which oil was seized as a new idiom in speech acts of naming, blaming and claiming by well‐established political actors who, speaking on the behalf of the subaltern, advanced their own political projects. In sum, oil is neither a blessing nor a curse but acts as a catalyst by opening new potentials, closing others and accelerating context‐specific dynamics. On the level of academic cooperation and capacity building, our project members were active partners in dialogue with fellow researchers in other subprojects and contributed to the vibrant academic exchange facilitated by the SPP. With regard to international cooperation and capacity, we have profited from the fruitful partnerships with our African partner institutes in Niger and Chad. CRASH in Chad and LASDEL in Niger contributed to the project through facilitation of research and workshops as well as with research findings from academics at junior and senior level. We are particularly proud to have seen the completion of several master theses on oil and the (near) completion of several PhD theses in both Germany and Africa.

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