Oil slicks from leaks in the various oil production and storage platforms located on Lake Maracaibo, in Venezuela, June 11, 2003. Courtesy NASA Earth Observatory.
How do developing nations balance economic growth and ecological harm, and what paths may lead to a post-fossil future?
This project will offer fresh analysis of the dynamics of “fossil capital” by shifting the frame away from large industrial economies and toward the economic trajectories and energy systems of postcolonial societies in the Global South. Scholars from the University and Visiting Fellows from around the world – historians and anthropologists as well as literary critics and philosophers – will collaborate to offer new frameworks of interpretation.
What is the relationship between capitalism and fossil fuels? So far the leading answers to this hotly debated question have claimed as universal the experiences of rich former imperial powers. This project instead centers the economic trajectories and energy systems of postcolonial societies in the Global South. The research team and visiting speakers will range across the planet – from the Americas to India, the Middle East to East Asia – to explore fossil capitalism on different scales, from the operations of national oil companies and multinational energy corporations to the racial violence that fractures labor mobilizations on and under the ground. Such cases promise to clarify the relations between carbon energy and socioeconomic power. Here, they detail the long histories of (neo)colonial extractivism that shape contemporary geopolitical relations and antagonisms. At the same time, they foreground the challenges and dilemmas posed by the twin revolutions of decolonization and democratization. This reframing of fossil capitalism raises new questions about the relationship between state sovereignty, popular expectations, and the hierarchical structures that underpin the international energy order. In the Global South, the dilemma of balancing economic development against ecological harm is posed with existential sharpness in a moment of accelerated climate catastrophe. Drawing together insights from history, anthropology, energy humanities, and political ecology, this project will trace new accounts of the forces holding the fossil economy in place. Moreover, it will reveal alternative paths and nodes of resistance to offer innovative visions of post-fossil futures.
Assistant Professor of Environmental History and the College
University of Chicago
Elizabeth Chatterjee is a historian of energy and the environment, with a focus on India from 1900 to the present. Her research explores how non-Western energy histories disrupt conventional understandings of capitalist development, the social dynamics of climate change, and green political...
Neubauer Family Assistant Professor of Anthropology
University of Chicago
Ryan Cecil Jobson is an anthropologist and social critic of the Caribbean and the Americas. His research and teaching engage issues of energy and extractivism, states and sovereignty, climate and crisis, race and capital. His first book manuscript, The Petro-State Masquerade, is a...
Associate Professor, Romance Languages and Literatures
University of Chicago
Victoria Saramago's research interests include twentieth- and twenty-first-century Latin American literatures and cultures with a focus on the environmental humanities, the energy humanities, the Great Acceleration and the Anthropocene, fiction theory, mimesis, and interdisciplinary approaches...
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
This symposium places the frameworks of “fossil capitalism” and “Global South” under empirical and conceptual scrutiny.
At this lecture Jennifer Wenzel will look at the relationship between slowness and speed in the history of fossil-fueled mobility.
Participants at this reading group discussed a selection of readings in preparation for a lecture by Jennifer Wenzel.
At this lecture, Diana J. Montaño discussed the "technological pilgrims" who crafted Mexico’s hydropower imaginary.
Participants at this reading group discussed a selection of readings by Diana Montaño, including the introduction to her book Electrifying Mexico.
Victoria Saramago has received a $60,000 Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities to pursue her research connecting electrical energy and culture production in Brazilian...
Participants at this roundtable will trace connections between histories of energy extraction and ecological transformation on different frontiers.
At this lecture, Hannah Appel (UCLA) discussed her acclaimed ethnography about the oil economy of Equatorial Guinea, The Licit Life of Capitalism.
This group will discuss a selection of readings ahead of a guest lecture by Hannah Appel (Associate Professor of Anthropology at UCLA) on Oct 28.
A roundtable with Elizabeth Chatterjee (History), Ryan Jobson (Anthropology), and Victoria Saramago (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
This symposium places the frameworks of “fossil capitalism” and “Global South” under empirical and conceptual scrutiny.
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
At this lecture Jennifer Wenzel will look at the relationship between slowness and speed in the history of fossil-fueled mobility.
At this lecture, Diana J. Montaño discussed the "technological pilgrims" who crafted Mexico’s hydropower imaginary.
At this lecture, Hannah Appel (UCLA) discussed her acclaimed ethnography about the oil economy of Equatorial Guinea, The Licit Life of Capitalism.
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
Participants at this reading group discussed a selection of readings in preparation for a lecture by Jennifer Wenzel.
Participants at this reading group discussed a selection of readings by Diana Montaño, including the introduction to her book Electrifying Mexico.
Participants at this roundtable will trace connections between histories of energy extraction and ecological transformation on different frontiers.
This group will discuss a selection of readings ahead of a guest lecture by Hannah Appel (Associate Professor of Anthropology at UCLA) on Oct 28.
A roundtable with Elizabeth Chatterjee (History), Ryan Jobson (Anthropology), and Victoria Saramago (Romance Languages and Literatures)
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
Victoria Saramago has received a $60,000 Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities to pursue her research connecting electrical energy and culture production in Brazilian...
