[1512] in peace2
Talk on Shell and Nigeria
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jeff Duritz)
Tue Feb 26 19:58:33 2002
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To: peace-announce@MIT.EDU
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Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 19:55:11 -0500
From: Jeff Duritz <jdu@MIT.EDU>
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MIT Sawyer Seminars
Modern Times, Rural Places
Black Gold, Delta Blues:
A Petrolic History of the Niger Delta
Michael J. Watts
Chancellor’s Professor of Geography,
University of California, Berkeley
Friday, March 1, 2002
2:00 - 4:00 p.m.
MIT, Building E51-095
This talk will explore the rural history of one part of Nigeria, the Niger
Delta, through a particular commodity: oil. The possible connections between
rural history with what is arguably the important resource of modernity,
namely petroleum, the 'fuel' of industrial (hydrocarbon) capitalism will be
explored. The discussion will also attempt to expose how the particularities
of the commodity - biophysical, industrial, cultural, mythic, ideological -
are key to understanding the increasingly violent, turbulent history of the
Niger Delta since 1960. The focus will be on the twin processes of what the
speaker calls petro-capitalism, and petro-modernity. A major theme will be
the political expression of these twin processes, and how they come to give
form to and shape the Delta's ‘economies of violence’.
Sponsored by MIT’s Program in Science, Technology and Society and the History
Faculty
For more information or to be put on the mailing list, please contact Diane
St. Laurent at dstl@mit.edu or
log onto our website at http://web.mit.edu/sts/ and
http://web.mit.edu/history/www/index.html.
