The Petro-state Masquerade: Oil, Sovereignty, and Power in Trinidad and Tobago
Ryan Cecil Jobson, "The Petro-state Masquerade: Oil, Sovereignty, and Power in Trinidad and Tobago"
English | ISBN: 0226837270 | 2024 | 240 pages | PDF | 60 MB
English | ISBN: 0226837270 | 2024 | 240 pages | PDF | 60 MB
A historical and ethnographic study of the fraught relationship between fossil fuels and political power in Trinidad and Tobago.
Examining the past, present, and future of Trinidad and Tobago’s oil and gas industries, anthropologist Ryan Cecil Jobson traces how a model of governance fashioned during prior oil booms is imperiled by declining fossil fuel production and a loss of state control. Despite the twin-island nation’s increasingly volatile and vulnerable financial condition, however, government officials continue to promote it as a land of inexhaustible resources and potentially limitless profits.
The result is what Jobson calls a “masquerade of permanence” whereby Trinbagonian state actors represent the nation as an interminable reserve of hydrocarbons primed for multinational investment. In
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