The International Institute of Social History (IISH) organizes a conference to be held from 13 until 16 June 2013 in Amsterdam on the comparative social histories of labour in the oil industry.
The conference is part of the larger project Labour in the Iranian Oil Industry at the IISH, which is supported by the Netherlands Organization of Scientific Research (NWO).
Background
This conference aims to pull together the work of scholars who situate labour and the social, political, and cultural dimensions of oil at the centre of their analysis. The conference is conceived as a comparative look at the social history of oil workers, so our invitation is going out to scholars whose work has pioneered original research, archival investigation, or anthropological and sociological field research into how labour relations and experiences have contributed and shaped the emergence of this global extractive industry.
Programme
Friday 14 June2013
09:30-13:00
Panel I: Built Environment
Chair and Discussant Marcel van der Linden (IISH)
Marcel van der Linden (IISH): The Promise and Challenges of Global Labour History
Mona Damluji (University of California at Berkeley): Picturing Persian Oil Workers in Anglo-Iranian Oil Company Films
Anna Zalik (York University): Labour as Nature and Labour versus Nature in the Oil Complex: The Mexican, Nigerian and Canadian Oil Industries
Nelida Fuccaro (SOAS, University of London): Telling the Human Story of Oil: Oil Propaganda and Corporate Representations of Urbanism in Iraq, Kuwait and Bahrain.
Kaveh Ehsani (IISH): The Urban Life of Oil: Rethinking the Politics of Oil as Money
14:30-18:00
Panel II: Workers Political and Social Organizations
Chair and Discussant: Rossana Barragan (IISH)
Andrew Lawrence (Vienna School of International Studies): The social construction and experience of power: Oil Industry Workers, Employers and States in Brazil, Nigeria, and Norway
Helge Riggvig (University of Oslo): Labour and the Norwegian Oil Experience
Stefano Tijerina (University of Maine): The Zero-Sum Game of Early Oil Extraction Relations in Colombia: Workers, Tropical Oil, and the Police State, 1918-1938
Rasmus Elling (University of Copenhagen): The World’s Biggest Refinery and the Second World War: Khuzestan, Oil and security
Peyman Jafari (IISH): Protest Dynamics and Organization Among Iranian Oil Workers (1978-1979)
Saturday 15 June 2013
09:30-13:00
Panel III: Ethnicity, Class, Public Identity
Chair and Discussant: Ulbe Bosma (IISH)
Kun-Chin Lin (University of Cambridge): Pricing Labor in State-led Privatization: A Case Study of the Chinese Oil Industry
Elizabetta Bini (University of Rome 2): U.S. Oil Companies and the Reshaping of Labour Relations in Libya, 1951-1969
Saulesh Yessenova (University of Calgary): Women, Family, and Labor in Oil‐ Producing Regions of
Kazakhstan
Tharapy Than (Northern Illinois University): Rebel Rousers but Not Labourers: Women in Burmese Oil Industry
Maral Jefroudi (IISH): The Changes in the Employment Structure of the Iranian Oil Industry After Nationalization: Who Climbs the Ladder?
14:30 -18:00
Panel IV: Labor Migration Process
Chair and Discussant Touraj Atabaki (IISH)
Fred Lawson (Mills College): Regional Dimensions of Labor Activism in Bahrain, 1930-1980
Parvin Ahanchi (Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences): Labor Force Migration during the First Baku Oil Boom
Touraj Atabaki (IISH): Far From Home, but at Home: Indian Migrant Workers in the Iranian Oil Industry
Touraj Atabaki (IISH): Some final remarks followed by Round-Table Discussion: Thinking Through Comparative Social Histories of Labour in the Oil Industry
Papers
The final versions of the papers presented at this conference will be published in an edited volume, which will open up an important, but significantly overlooked dimension of the oil complex. The organizers are delighted to have assembled scholars from a range of disciplines whose work will shed light on the historical and contemporary experience of oil workers in a number of key oil producing regions that include Latin America, the Middle East, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Europe and Africa.
For further information, please contact:
Touraj Atabaki (tat [at] iisg.nl)
Kaveh Ehsani (Kaveh.Ehsani [at] iisg.nl)