Hope & Oil

Expectations in São Tomé e Príncipe

Bibliographic Data

ID11904541
AuthorsGisa Weszkalnys (0009-0006-4447-121X, University of Oxford, corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume35
Issue117
Pages473-482
Publication date2008-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueReview of African Political Economy (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0305-6244 • E-ISSN: 1740-1720
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/03056240802411156
OpenAlexW2141892228
LanguageEN
Citations received24
References cited20

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Acknowledgments Editor's Note Also see ROAPE's back issues: ‘The Bush Administration and African Oil: The Security Implications of US Energy Policy’ by Daniel Volman (No. 98, December 2003, pp.573–584); also by Volman, ‘US Military Involvement in Africa’ (No. 103, March 2005, pp.187–189); ‘America, China & the Scramble for Africa's Oil’ by Michael Klare & Daniel Volman (No. 108, June 2006, pp. 297–309); ‘US to Create New Regional Military Command for Africa: AFRICOM’ by Daniel Volman (No. 114, December 2007,pp.737–744) and last,'Chad-Cameroon Oil Pipeline: World Bank and ExxonMobil in ‘Last Chance Saloon’ by Jeremy H. Keenan (No.104/5, June/September 2005, pp. 395–405) which specifically looks at the issues raised in this Sao Tomé briefing: One of the biggest issues facing global development is that oil exports have contributed so little to the welfare of developing countries. The ‘paradox of plenty’, or the ‘resource curse’ as it is generally known, is that countries rich in natural resources, especially oil, tend to suffer from lower living standards, slower growth rates and higher incidence of conflict than their resource-poor counterparts. Between 1970–1993, for example, resource-poor countries, without petroleum, grew four times more rapidly than resource-rich countries, with petroleum, despite the fact that they had half the savings. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) have both confirmed that the greater a country's dependence on oil and mineral resources, the worse its growth performance. See also, Association of Concerned African Scholars at http://concernedafricascholars.org Founded in 1979, the Association of Concerned Africa Scholars (ACAS) is a group of scholars and students of Africa dedicated to formulating alternative analyses of Africa and US government policy, developing communication and action networks between the peoples and scholars of Africa and the United States, and mobilizing support in the United States on critical, current issues related to Africa. Notes This preliminary analysis draws on eight months of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2007, conducted with support from the British Academy and the John Fell Research Fund. It included more than fifty interviews with representatives of the local administration, transnational agencies, oil corporations, NGOs, as well as ex-pats and ordinary Santomeans. The project has benefited tremendously from discussions with Andrew Barry as well as from the comments of the participants in the ‘Oil and Politics’ Conference, Goldsmiths, London, May 2007. The research intends to contribute to a growing body of work on oil by human geographers and anthropologists (e.g., Apter, 2005 Apter, A. 2005. The Pan-African Nation: oil and the spectacle of culture in Nigeria, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Barry, 2004 Barry, A. 2004. “Ethical Capitalism”. In Global Governmentality, Edited by: Larner, W. and Walters, W. London: Routledge. [Google Scholar], 2006; Ferguson, 2005 Ferguson, J. 2005. ‘Seeing Like an Oil Company: Space, Security, and Global Capital in Neoliberal Africa’ in. American Anthropologist, 107(3): 377–382. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]; Roitman & Roso n.d. Procuradoria Geral da República São Tomé e Príncipe (2005), Investigação e Avaliação Segundo Leilão Zona de Desenvolvimento Conjunto; http://www.juristep.com/rela-torios/PGR.pdf; accessed 6 March 2008. [Google Scholar]; Sawyer, 2004 Sawyer, S. 2004. “Crude Chronicles: indigenous politics, multinational oil, and neoliberalism in Ecuador”. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]; Watts, 2001 Watts, M. 2001. “Petro-Violence: Community, Extraction, and Political Ecology of a Mythic Commodity”. In Violent Environments, Edited by: Peluso, N. L. and Watts, M. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press. [Google Scholar], 2004 Watts, M. and Warner, A. 2004. ‘Resource curse? Governmentality, oil and power in the Niger Delta, Nigeria’. Geopolitics, 9(1): 50–80. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar])

China · Crude oil · Curse · Development economics · Economics · Economy · Foreign policy · Natural resource · Oil reserves · Petroleum · Political science · Politics · Resource (disambiguation · Resource curse · Sociology · Global Energy and Sustainability Research · International Development and Aid · Law · Natural Resources and Economic Development

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