Violent ecotropes: petroculture in the Niger Delta

Abstract

The Niger Delta, the crude oil extraction centre of Nigeria, has become an archetype of global consumption happening at the expense of local communities and habitats. Much is made of the spectacle of violence in this region: environmental devastation, local community protests and youth violence on account of the perceived injustice associated with the oil extractive industrial complex. The involvement of a global cartel of oil smuggling from this region, known as bunkering, fuels and finances local militancy, which in turn exacerbates the atmosphere of violence in this beleaguered landscape of oil.

This book provides a unique frame through which it views the cultural aspects of the oil extraction industry within societies that it operates. It highlights the complexity of the universal environmental challenge of our time, and provides three research lenses with which to understand this complex challenge: who and what are represented in this oil culture, the charged and often clashing contexts of globalised fossil fuel extraction industry versus the ecologies of directly affected people and places, and the environmental challenges that will persist as long as carbon based economies persist.