Liquid Oman: oil, water, and causality in Southern Arabia

Contenu

Titre

Liquid Oman: oil, water, and causality in Southern Arabia

Créateur

Limbert, Mandana E. Voir tous les contenus avec cette valeur

Date

2016

Dans

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute Voir tous les contenus avec cette valeur

Résumé

This paper explores how different natural resources figure in temporal imaginings. I ask: how do oil and water come to frame the relationships and chronologies of transformation and, more particularly, of causality? In order to understand visions of environmental futures, not only might we need to attend to the forms of planning, expectation, and prognosis that shape knowledge or senses of the future, but we may also consider how and why causality and significant events are associated with particular natural resources. Drawing on my previous work that explores the future orientation of oil-depletion talk in Oman as well as textual sources and ethnography, I argue that while water has been associated with pious rule and divine presence, oil has been considered to be much more transitory and the product of human interventions and policies, interventions and policies that emerge from a fraught political history. While water seems to motivate events and cause change, serving as an indication and vehicle of God's power, oil appears less a cause of national transformation, at least in its origins.

Langue

fre

volume

22

numéro

S1

pages

147-162

doi

https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.12398

issn

1467-9655

Titre abrégé

Liquid Oman

Limbert, Mandana E., “Liquid Oman: oil, water, and causality in Southern Arabia”, 2016, bibliographie, consulté le 18 septembre 2024, https://ibadica.org/s/bibliographie/item/7787