Victoria Bernal, Katrien Pype and Daivi Rodima-Taylor (eds), Cryptopolitics: Exposure, Concealment, and Digital Media. New York NY: Berghahn Books (hb US$135/£99 – 978 1 80539 029 9). 2023, vii + 245 pp
Political and legal anthropology review, Apr 28, 2015
The environmental movement's most difficult and important twenty-first century challenge involves... more The environmental movement's most difficult and important twenty-first century challenge involves aligning efforts to preserve habitats with the priorities of social justice. Muehlmann's ethnography contributes to this undertaking by humanizing those most affected by environmentalists' failures to grasp sociopolitical realities. She also illuminates the cascading negative consequences of poorly defined yet basic concepts of water law such as "beneficial use" when implemented nationally and internationally. A strong ethnographic trope, the Colorado River draws the ethnographer from its U.S. headwaters, through dams and diversions, to the Cucapá people living beside its dead end. Transformed by war, law and engineering, the river is now too short to reach the sea, too meager to function as their traditional subsistence base. In 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court sealed the Colorado's fate in Arizona v. California (373 US 546), which determined the river rights of Arizona, Nevada, and California and quantified reserved rights for five native American reservations along the lower Colorado, leaving out other native tribes in the U.S. and all of the indigenous people who lived downstream in Mexico. In 1994, the implementation of NAFTA enabled the already diminished river to be devastated by new industrial factories (maquiladoras) on the border, which were given license to suck out and pollute almost all of the water remaining. This legal pillaging leaves little for the people, animals, and plants of the drying delta.
The Petro-Developmental State in Africa: Making Oil Work in Angola, Nigeria and the Gulf of Guinea by Jesse Salah Ovadia London: Hurst, 2016. Pp. 246. £40 (hbk)
Embodying the Modern: Neoliberalism, NGOs, and the Culture of Human Rights Practices in Nigeria
Anthropological Quarterly, 2016
ABSTRACT:The idea that neoliberalism is about shrinking the state to make it more effective has o... more ABSTRACT:The idea that neoliberalism is about shrinking the state to make it more effective has often translated to what many have called the “outsourcing” of state responsibilities to NGOs. This article investigates the growing influence of NGOs and NGO practices in Nigeria, while also illustrating Nigerian NGO connections to transnational networks of human rights NGOs. It maps the genealogies of two Nigerian NGOs, CLEEN and CISLAC, through the rise of their leaders. I argue that the culture of NGO practices is emblematic of how neoliberalism loathes the state in ways that privilege NGOs as alternatives to the state. I use this article to think through the following questions: how is it that NGOs engage in claim-making that imbues practitioners with knowledge aimed at reshaping structures of power? Why do NGOs demonize nation-state governance structures perceived as alien and backward? How is it that structures of governance shaped by neoliberal practices are claimed, normalized, and imbibed by NGOs as practices that are modern? These practices, I argue, are illustrative of how the culture of human rights has and continues to transform power structures in Nigeria.
Criminal Resistance?: The Politics of Kidnapping Oil Workers
Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 2015
Criminal Resistance? offers an ethnographic perspective on the politics of subversion by differen... more Criminal Resistance? offers an ethnographic perspective on the politics of subversion by different actors in the oil-rich Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Temitope Oriola opens with two incisive quotes from important protagonists of the Niger Delta struggle, Ken Saro Wiwa—the leader of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MSOOP), convicted and murdered by the Nigerian state in 1993 because of his environmental activism—and Asari Dokubo—leader of the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force (NDPVF), an insurgency group that operates in the Niger Delta. The first quote highlights Ken Saro Wiwa’s prediction about an elusive peace in the Delta, while the quote by Dokubo shows how insurgents decided to shelve the peaceful protest of Wiwa for an armed uprising. The quote is quickly followed by an account of how four foreign oil workers were kidnapped in an attack on a Shell offshore oil facility in 2006 by Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta People (MEND). The book focuses on ‘‘kidnappings that are putatively connected to the struggle for emancipating the Niger Delta’’ (p. 5), intending to ascertain whether kidnapping should be seen as a form of protest against the state and oil corporations or as a criminal enterprise. Insurgents tie their oppression to a lack of benefits from the exploitation of oil, their natural resource. Using this knowledge, Oriola suggests that kidnapping offered MEND a form of political expression that frames the Niger Delta struggle as a struggle for the emancipation of the entire region. Oriola categorized actors involved in the Niger Delta insurgency into ‘‘firstand second-order casts’’ (p. 25). The firstorder cast is constituted by the Niger Delta communities, interventionist groups such as NGOs, oil workers, transnational oil corporations, the Nigerian state and its security agencies, and insurgents. The second-order cast is made up of Nigerian society, insurance companies/brokers such as Lloyd’s of London, researchers, academics, global security information companies, the media, and private military corporations. It is the intertwining interactions among these orders that make the phenomenon of kidnapping oil workers in the Niger Delta a very complex enterprise. To better understand this complexity, Oriola suggests that we incorporate insurgents such as MEND, who link themselves to wider social movements in the Delta region and these movements’ demands, into our understanding of the functionality of social movements. Kidnapping is seen as ‘‘a spectacular array of performances within an ambience of contentious politics manufactured by the intricacies of the political economy of the Nigerian rentier petro-state’’ (p. 24). Thus, in the performance of the act of kidnappings, oil workers are seen by the insurgents as a ‘‘foreign other’’ whose interests align with the old colonial order during the colonization (or rather, exploitation) of Nigeria. When oil workers are kidnapped, insurgents and other actors see the process as a form of ‘‘reverse exploitation’’ (p. 77), where the exploiters are being made to pay for their ‘‘sin.’’ One major characteristic of the insurgency in the Delta, Oriola argues, is the fluidity in their membership. This fluidity ‘‘is not necessarily a quality of MEND’’ (p. 94), but a feature that reverberates among insurgents in the entire region. Since membership is fluid, many insurgents oftentimes cooperate and collaborate in the prosecution of kidnappings as a strategy for the emancipation of the Delta. Many see their participation in the established groups as a form of apprenticeship from which, after a period, they graduate to forming their own group while retaining the capacity to continue to collaborate and cooperate with their old group. This capacity, Reviews 391
Mythic Oil: Resources, Belonging and the Politics of Claim Making Among the Ìlàjẹ Yorùbá of Nigeria
Africa, 2013
ABSTRACTThis article examines the genealogies of the Ìlàjẹ and the narrative of belonging that re... more ABSTRACTThis article examines the genealogies of the Ìlàjẹ and the narrative of belonging that reinforces claims to ownership of land and natural resources such as oil. The article maps how oil flow stations, pipelines and platforms have come to represent an ancestral promise of wealth to many members of Ìlàjẹ communities. This claim making is embedded in a mythic origin that continuously reinforces a distinct identity that projects an imagined community connected to the Yorùbá of south-west Nigeria as well as the oil-rich Niger Delta region. While many scholars have studied the myth of origin of the Yorùbá, in most cases focusing on rituals and political imagination that intersect with linguistic evidence in determining Yorùbá identity, these scholars have often neglected the centrality of these myths to oil resources. Thus, I investigate how the Ìlàjẹ narrative of belonging creates its own specificity of ‘ownership’ of natural resources through ritual performances connected to mig...
PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 2017
President Jonathan announced that he had set up a Facebook page. Within a few days, his first pos... more President Jonathan announced that he had set up a Facebook page. Within a few days, his first post garnered 1,344 likes and more than 2,139 comments. This article examines how Nigerians use social media to interact with the state. It asks: How does social media facilitate conversations on what constitutes a national resource? How is social media creating citizens who are simultaneously anonymous and visible? It suggests that Facebook and other sites on which Jonathan established online presences were constructed as political spaces to interact with the youth of Nigeria, molding that constituency into loyal social media citizens ready to align with his aspirations. It also describes social media as sites on which the politics of claim-making produce the social mediation of oil as a commonwealth in Nigeria. The use of the term "social media citizens" is anchored in the fluidity of citizenship. Jonathan's use of Facebook as both public and political spaces elevated the site to a national forum on a resource whose distribution must benefit all Nigerians: oil. The article suggests further that social media can serve as a site on This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. 2 which social media citizens can critique how the state manages and distributes oil.
The Rise and Decline (and Rise) of the Niger Delta Rebellion
The Oxford Handbook of Nigerian Politics, 2018
In the last two decades, the struggles to control the oil resources of the Niger Delta have conti... more In the last two decades, the struggles to control the oil resources of the Niger Delta have continued to be defining moments of political organizing in Nigeria. Multinational corporations such as Chevron, Shell, and Mobil, as well as the Nigerian state, engage in practices that result in the production of centralized power to strengthen the state’s hold on oil resources. However, local-level citizens and groups increasingly challenge the marginalization of their oil-producing communities. As their human and environmental rights are suppressed, they adopt alternative means of negotiating survival and other forms of power to assert communal control of their land and resources. This chapter argues that an oil economy and practices associated with it have produced three interrelated moments for Nigeria and the Niger Delta that are rooted in an extractive practice that privileges the state and multinational oil corporations and puts communities where the oil is located at a disadvantage.
China-Africa and an Economic Transformation, Apr 15, 2019
In the last few years, there has been a significant increase in the number of Chinese businesses ... more In the last few years, there has been a significant increase in the number of Chinese businesses operating in Nigeria. The transition to civil rule in 1999 and the eventual consolidation of a liberalized economy by successive administrations have resulted in the signing of several business deals with the Chinese government and Chinese enterprises. In line with the Federalist structure of the Nigerian government, many of these new enterprises have arisen from collaborations between Chinese companies and state and local governments in Nigeria. While central government efforts to shift the economy away from oil dependency have largely failed, state and local governments, at least on the surface seem committed in working with Chinese firms to increase investment in enterprises that will help generate a growth-oriented diversified economy. However, Chinese interests in Nigeria appear to continue to focus on oil extraction and related industries. Among other things, this chapter will look specifically at the construction of a Free Trade Zones in Lagos and Ogun States with emphasis on evaluating the extractive practices within these two zones. The chapter will focus on documenting and assessing the nature and impact of Chinese investment projects in different regions of Nigeria to see if the shapes of Chinese projects are in the image of Prometheus or Leviathan.
Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: Environment, Transnational Networks, and Resource Extractio... more Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: Environment, Transnational Networks, and Resource Extraction 1. Sweet Crude: Neoliberalism and the Paradox of Oil Politics 2. The Spatialization of Human and Environmental Rights Practices 3. Mythic Oil: Corporations, Resistance, and the Politics of Claim-making 4. Contesting Landscapes of Wealth: Oil Platforms of Possibilities and Pipelines of Conflict 5. The State's Two Bodies: Creeks of Violence and the City of Sin 6. Oil Wealth Of Violence: The Social and Spatial Construction of Militancy 7. Proclaiming Amnesty, Constructing Peace: Oil and the Silencing of Violence Conclusion: Beyond The Struggle for Oil Resources Notes Bibliography Index
This ethnographic investigation of the rise of the artisanal oil refining industry in the Niger D... more This ethnographic investigation of the rise of the artisanal oil refining industry in the Niger Delta, Nigeria, shows how oil infrastructures have become contested between the state, multinational oil corporations and local youths in what I call a ‘new oil frontier’. I argue that artisanal refineries are indicative of the politics of crude oil governance and reveal complex, integrated and innovative forms of extractive practices by youth groups within many Niger Delta communities. Using the example of the Bodo community in Ogoniland, where local youths operate refineries constructed with local materials and technology, I show that such refineries represent an emergent form of energy capture that transforms the creeks of the Niger Delta into islands of carbon sale and challenges state and corporate power.
An Ethnography of Hunger: Politics, Subsistence, and the Unpredictable Grace of the Sun Kristin D. Phillips (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019)
Contemporary Nigerian Politics: competition in a time of transition and terror by A. Carl LeVan Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. 300, $29.99 (pbk)
Victoria Bernal, Katrien Pype and Daivi Rodima-Taylor (eds), Cryptopolitics: Exposure, Concealment, and Digital Media. New York NY: Berghahn Books (hb US$135/£99 – 978 1 80539 029 9). 2023, vii + 245 pp
Political and legal anthropology review, Apr 28, 2015
The environmental movement's most difficult and important twenty-first century challenge involves... more The environmental movement's most difficult and important twenty-first century challenge involves aligning efforts to preserve habitats with the priorities of social justice. Muehlmann's ethnography contributes to this undertaking by humanizing those most affected by environmentalists' failures to grasp sociopolitical realities. She also illuminates the cascading negative consequences of poorly defined yet basic concepts of water law such as "beneficial use" when implemented nationally and internationally. A strong ethnographic trope, the Colorado River draws the ethnographer from its U.S. headwaters, through dams and diversions, to the Cucapá people living beside its dead end. Transformed by war, law and engineering, the river is now too short to reach the sea, too meager to function as their traditional subsistence base. In 1963, the U.S. Supreme Court sealed the Colorado's fate in Arizona v. California (373 US 546), which determined the river rights of Arizona, Nevada, and California and quantified reserved rights for five native American reservations along the lower Colorado, leaving out other native tribes in the U.S. and all of the indigenous people who lived downstream in Mexico. In 1994, the implementation of NAFTA enabled the already diminished river to be devastated by new industrial factories (maquiladoras) on the border, which were given license to suck out and pollute almost all of the water remaining. This legal pillaging leaves little for the people, animals, and plants of the drying delta.
The Petro-Developmental State in Africa: Making Oil Work in Angola, Nigeria and the Gulf of Guinea by Jesse Salah Ovadia London: Hurst, 2016. Pp. 246. £40 (hbk)
Embodying the Modern: Neoliberalism, NGOs, and the Culture of Human Rights Practices in Nigeria
Anthropological Quarterly, 2016
ABSTRACT:The idea that neoliberalism is about shrinking the state to make it more effective has o... more ABSTRACT:The idea that neoliberalism is about shrinking the state to make it more effective has often translated to what many have called the “outsourcing” of state responsibilities to NGOs. This article investigates the growing influence of NGOs and NGO practices in Nigeria, while also illustrating Nigerian NGO connections to transnational networks of human rights NGOs. It maps the genealogies of two Nigerian NGOs, CLEEN and CISLAC, through the rise of their leaders. I argue that the culture of NGO practices is emblematic of how neoliberalism loathes the state in ways that privilege NGOs as alternatives to the state. I use this article to think through the following questions: how is it that NGOs engage in claim-making that imbues practitioners with knowledge aimed at reshaping structures of power? Why do NGOs demonize nation-state governance structures perceived as alien and backward? How is it that structures of governance shaped by neoliberal practices are claimed, normalized, and imbibed by NGOs as practices that are modern? These practices, I argue, are illustrative of how the culture of human rights has and continues to transform power structures in Nigeria.
Criminal Resistance?: The Politics of Kidnapping Oil Workers
Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews, 2015
Criminal Resistance? offers an ethnographic perspective on the politics of subversion by differen... more Criminal Resistance? offers an ethnographic perspective on the politics of subversion by different actors in the oil-rich Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Temitope Oriola opens with two incisive quotes from important protagonists of the Niger Delta struggle, Ken Saro Wiwa—the leader of the Movement for the Survival of Ogoni People (MSOOP), convicted and murdered by the Nigerian state in 1993 because of his environmental activism—and Asari Dokubo—leader of the Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force (NDPVF), an insurgency group that operates in the Niger Delta. The first quote highlights Ken Saro Wiwa’s prediction about an elusive peace in the Delta, while the quote by Dokubo shows how insurgents decided to shelve the peaceful protest of Wiwa for an armed uprising. The quote is quickly followed by an account of how four foreign oil workers were kidnapped in an attack on a Shell offshore oil facility in 2006 by Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta People (MEND). The book focuses on ‘‘kidnappings that are putatively connected to the struggle for emancipating the Niger Delta’’ (p. 5), intending to ascertain whether kidnapping should be seen as a form of protest against the state and oil corporations or as a criminal enterprise. Insurgents tie their oppression to a lack of benefits from the exploitation of oil, their natural resource. Using this knowledge, Oriola suggests that kidnapping offered MEND a form of political expression that frames the Niger Delta struggle as a struggle for the emancipation of the entire region. Oriola categorized actors involved in the Niger Delta insurgency into ‘‘firstand second-order casts’’ (p. 25). The firstorder cast is constituted by the Niger Delta communities, interventionist groups such as NGOs, oil workers, transnational oil corporations, the Nigerian state and its security agencies, and insurgents. The second-order cast is made up of Nigerian society, insurance companies/brokers such as Lloyd’s of London, researchers, academics, global security information companies, the media, and private military corporations. It is the intertwining interactions among these orders that make the phenomenon of kidnapping oil workers in the Niger Delta a very complex enterprise. To better understand this complexity, Oriola suggests that we incorporate insurgents such as MEND, who link themselves to wider social movements in the Delta region and these movements’ demands, into our understanding of the functionality of social movements. Kidnapping is seen as ‘‘a spectacular array of performances within an ambience of contentious politics manufactured by the intricacies of the political economy of the Nigerian rentier petro-state’’ (p. 24). Thus, in the performance of the act of kidnappings, oil workers are seen by the insurgents as a ‘‘foreign other’’ whose interests align with the old colonial order during the colonization (or rather, exploitation) of Nigeria. When oil workers are kidnapped, insurgents and other actors see the process as a form of ‘‘reverse exploitation’’ (p. 77), where the exploiters are being made to pay for their ‘‘sin.’’ One major characteristic of the insurgency in the Delta, Oriola argues, is the fluidity in their membership. This fluidity ‘‘is not necessarily a quality of MEND’’ (p. 94), but a feature that reverberates among insurgents in the entire region. Since membership is fluid, many insurgents oftentimes cooperate and collaborate in the prosecution of kidnappings as a strategy for the emancipation of the Delta. Many see their participation in the established groups as a form of apprenticeship from which, after a period, they graduate to forming their own group while retaining the capacity to continue to collaborate and cooperate with their old group. This capacity, Reviews 391
Mythic Oil: Resources, Belonging and the Politics of Claim Making Among the Ìlàjẹ Yorùbá of Nigeria
Africa, 2013
ABSTRACTThis article examines the genealogies of the Ìlàjẹ and the narrative of belonging that re... more ABSTRACTThis article examines the genealogies of the Ìlàjẹ and the narrative of belonging that reinforces claims to ownership of land and natural resources such as oil. The article maps how oil flow stations, pipelines and platforms have come to represent an ancestral promise of wealth to many members of Ìlàjẹ communities. This claim making is embedded in a mythic origin that continuously reinforces a distinct identity that projects an imagined community connected to the Yorùbá of south-west Nigeria as well as the oil-rich Niger Delta region. While many scholars have studied the myth of origin of the Yorùbá, in most cases focusing on rituals and political imagination that intersect with linguistic evidence in determining Yorùbá identity, these scholars have often neglected the centrality of these myths to oil resources. Thus, I investigate how the Ìlàjẹ narrative of belonging creates its own specificity of ‘ownership’ of natural resources through ritual performances connected to mig...
PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 2017
President Jonathan announced that he had set up a Facebook page. Within a few days, his first pos... more President Jonathan announced that he had set up a Facebook page. Within a few days, his first post garnered 1,344 likes and more than 2,139 comments. This article examines how Nigerians use social media to interact with the state. It asks: How does social media facilitate conversations on what constitutes a national resource? How is social media creating citizens who are simultaneously anonymous and visible? It suggests that Facebook and other sites on which Jonathan established online presences were constructed as political spaces to interact with the youth of Nigeria, molding that constituency into loyal social media citizens ready to align with his aspirations. It also describes social media as sites on which the politics of claim-making produce the social mediation of oil as a commonwealth in Nigeria. The use of the term "social media citizens" is anchored in the fluidity of citizenship. Jonathan's use of Facebook as both public and political spaces elevated the site to a national forum on a resource whose distribution must benefit all Nigerians: oil. The article suggests further that social media can serve as a site on This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. 2 which social media citizens can critique how the state manages and distributes oil.
The Rise and Decline (and Rise) of the Niger Delta Rebellion
The Oxford Handbook of Nigerian Politics, 2018
In the last two decades, the struggles to control the oil resources of the Niger Delta have conti... more In the last two decades, the struggles to control the oil resources of the Niger Delta have continued to be defining moments of political organizing in Nigeria. Multinational corporations such as Chevron, Shell, and Mobil, as well as the Nigerian state, engage in practices that result in the production of centralized power to strengthen the state’s hold on oil resources. However, local-level citizens and groups increasingly challenge the marginalization of their oil-producing communities. As their human and environmental rights are suppressed, they adopt alternative means of negotiating survival and other forms of power to assert communal control of their land and resources. This chapter argues that an oil economy and practices associated with it have produced three interrelated moments for Nigeria and the Niger Delta that are rooted in an extractive practice that privileges the state and multinational oil corporations and puts communities where the oil is located at a disadvantage.
China-Africa and an Economic Transformation, Apr 15, 2019
In the last few years, there has been a significant increase in the number of Chinese businesses ... more In the last few years, there has been a significant increase in the number of Chinese businesses operating in Nigeria. The transition to civil rule in 1999 and the eventual consolidation of a liberalized economy by successive administrations have resulted in the signing of several business deals with the Chinese government and Chinese enterprises. In line with the Federalist structure of the Nigerian government, many of these new enterprises have arisen from collaborations between Chinese companies and state and local governments in Nigeria. While central government efforts to shift the economy away from oil dependency have largely failed, state and local governments, at least on the surface seem committed in working with Chinese firms to increase investment in enterprises that will help generate a growth-oriented diversified economy. However, Chinese interests in Nigeria appear to continue to focus on oil extraction and related industries. Among other things, this chapter will look specifically at the construction of a Free Trade Zones in Lagos and Ogun States with emphasis on evaluating the extractive practices within these two zones. The chapter will focus on documenting and assessing the nature and impact of Chinese investment projects in different regions of Nigeria to see if the shapes of Chinese projects are in the image of Prometheus or Leviathan.
Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: Environment, Transnational Networks, and Resource Extractio... more Preface Acknowledgments Introduction: Environment, Transnational Networks, and Resource Extraction 1. Sweet Crude: Neoliberalism and the Paradox of Oil Politics 2. The Spatialization of Human and Environmental Rights Practices 3. Mythic Oil: Corporations, Resistance, and the Politics of Claim-making 4. Contesting Landscapes of Wealth: Oil Platforms of Possibilities and Pipelines of Conflict 5. The State's Two Bodies: Creeks of Violence and the City of Sin 6. Oil Wealth Of Violence: The Social and Spatial Construction of Militancy 7. Proclaiming Amnesty, Constructing Peace: Oil and the Silencing of Violence Conclusion: Beyond The Struggle for Oil Resources Notes Bibliography Index
This ethnographic investigation of the rise of the artisanal oil refining industry in the Niger D... more This ethnographic investigation of the rise of the artisanal oil refining industry in the Niger Delta, Nigeria, shows how oil infrastructures have become contested between the state, multinational oil corporations and local youths in what I call a ‘new oil frontier’. I argue that artisanal refineries are indicative of the politics of crude oil governance and reveal complex, integrated and innovative forms of extractive practices by youth groups within many Niger Delta communities. Using the example of the Bodo community in Ogoniland, where local youths operate refineries constructed with local materials and technology, I show that such refineries represent an emergent form of energy capture that transforms the creeks of the Niger Delta into islands of carbon sale and challenges state and corporate power.
An Ethnography of Hunger: Politics, Subsistence, and the Unpredictable Grace of the Sun Kristin D. Phillips (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2019)
Contemporary Nigerian Politics: competition in a time of transition and terror by A. Carl LeVan Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. 300, $29.99 (pbk)
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