Mythic Oil

Resources, Belonging and the Politics of Claim Making Among the Ìlàjẹ Yorùbá of Nigeria

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2102890
AutoresỌmọlade Adunbi (0000-0003-1481-0883, autor correspondente)
Ano2013
Volume83
Fascículo2
Páginas293-313
Data de publicação2013-05-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoAfrica (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0001-9720 • E-ISSN: 1750-0184
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0001972013000053
OpenAlexW2162343909
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas10
Referências citadas15

This article examines the genealogies of the Ìlàjẹ and the narrative of belonging that reinforces claims to ownership of land and natural resources such as oil. The article maps how oil flow stations, pipelines and platforms have come to represent an ancestral promise of wealth to many members of Ìlàjẹ communities. This claim making is embedded in a mythic origin that continuously reinforces a distinct identity that projects an imagined community connected to the Yorùbá of south-west Nigeria as well as the oil-rich Niger Delta region. While many scholars have studied the myth of origin of the Yorùbá, in most cases focusing on rituals and political imagination that intersect with linguistic evidence in determining Yorùbá identity, these scholars have often neglected the centrality of these myths to oil resources. Thus, I investigate how the Ìlàjẹ narrative of belonging creates its own specificity of 'ownership' of natural resources through ritual performances connected to migration and dispersal of subject populations. I examine how such narratives create spaces of opportunity for the organization of protests against multinational oil corporations and the Nigerian state

Aesthetics · Ethnology · Identity (music · Linguistics · Literature · Multinational corporation · Mythology · Narrative · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science · Subject (documents · Yoruba · African studies and sociopolitical issues · Anthropology · Gender Studies · History · Law · Middle East and Rwanda Conflicts · Natural Resources and Economic Development