The Subterranean Unsettling of Science, Race, and Religion

Obeah, Petroleum Geology, and Risk in Trinidad

Bibliographic Data

ID2109366
AuthorsBrent Crosson (0000-0001-5453-5981, The University of Texas at Austin, corresponding author)
Year2024
Volume66
Issue3
Pages501-527
Publication date2024-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueComparative Studies in Society and History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0010-4175 • E-ISSN: 1475-2999
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0010417524000033
OpenAlexW4393232150
LanguageEN
References cited49

When scholars have compared 'African traditional religion' and 'Western science,' they have often treated the terms of this comparison as racialized unitary entities, which are either radically different or somewhat similar (even as Western categories of rationality or nature remain the basis for these comparisons). This essay unsettles these assumptions by focusing on practices that are called 'science' in the fields of both petroleum geology and Afro-Caribbean religion. Based on long-term ethnographic research in Trinidad, arguably the world's oldest site of commercial oil extraction, I show how internal differences between those involved in 'petroleum science' and 'African religion' reveal a spectrum of meanings for the word 'science' centered on relations to risk. At one end of this spectrum, science conveyed ideals of stable tradition that de-risked claims to knowledge for energy sector specialists intent on securing foreign investment or for 'Yorubacentric' lineages of African religion centering initiation-based authority. At this spectrum's other end, 'science' foregrounded the risks of accessing hard-to-perceive forces in petroleum exploration or 'spiritual work.' By focusing on heterogeneous practices rather than cultural essences or ideals of rationality, I show how the ethical implications of 'science' depend on differing experiences of the risks of working with subterranean powers. While petroleum surveys at my field site in Trinidad required embodied risks by laborers, geologists backgrounded these contexts of power, representing the risks of their work as a problem of scientific accuracy. Afro-Trinidadian spiritual workers, in contrast, foregrounded the embodied risks of science as the ground of ethical practice

Petroleum · Race (biology · Anthropological Studies and Insights · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Ecocriticism and Environmental Literature · Geology · Paleontology