Grassroots Politics and Oil Culture in Venezuela: The Revolutionary Petro-State

ISBN-13: 9783319595061 / Angielski / Twarda / 2017 / 357 str.

Iselin Asedotter Stronen

Opis

This book is published open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.
This book presents an ethnographic study of how grassroots activism in Venezuela during the Chavez presidency can be understood in relation to the country's history as a petro-state. Taking the contested relationship between the popular sectors and the Venezuelan state as a point of departure, Iselin Asedotter Stronen explores how notions such as class, race, state, bureaucracy, popular politics, capitalism, neoliberalism, consumption, oil wealth, and corruption gained salience in the Bolivarian process. A central argument is that the Bolivarian process was an attempt to challenge the practices, ideas, and values inherited from Venezuela's historical development as an oil-producing state. Drawing on rich ethnographic material from Caracas' shantytowns, state institutions, as well as everyday life and public culture, Stronen explores the complexities and challenges in fostering deep social and political change.

Spis treści

1. Introduction: Understanding Venezuela Before and Under Chávez

Section one: For years, the social movements were treated as hordes, as unruly ‘negros’

2. Barrio Lives and Histories

3. Contested Community Politics

Section two: If we don’t transform the state, we keep strengthening the old

4. The State as a Battlefield

5. Popularizing the State

Section three: Here in Venezuela, we have always been quite ‘consumista’

6. Moralities, Money, and Extractive Capitalism

7. Collective Consumption and the Magical State

8. Corruption in the Petro-State

9. Conclusion: Understanding the Revolutionary Petro-State

O autorze

Iselin Åsedotter Strønen is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen, Norway, and Affiliated Researcher at the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI), Norway.

Blurb

This book is published open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.

This book presents an ethnographic study of how grassroots activism in Venezuela during the Chávez presidency can be understood in relation to the country's history as a petro-state. Taking the contested relationship between the popular sectors and the Venezuelan state as a point of departure, Iselin Åsedotter Strønen explores how notions such as class, race, state, bureaucracy, popular politics, capitalism, neoliberalism, consumption, oil wealth, and corruption gained salience in the Bolivarian process. A central argument is that the Bolivarian process was an attempt to challenge the practices, ideas, and values inherited from Venezuela's historical development as an oil-producing state. Drawing on rich ethnographic material from Caracas' shantytowns, state institutions, as well as everyday life and public culture, Strønen explores the complexities and challenges in fostering deep social and political change.