Projects of devotion : energy exploration and moral ambition in the cosmoeconomy of oil and gas in the Western United States
Abstract
This article considers how people working in the oil and gas industry in Colorado perceive their involvement in energy exploration in relation to broader understandings of devotion, compassion, and outreach. I argue that although their energy projects may appear to merely echo companies’ formal promotional pitches, the oil field and corporate actors’ own moral ambitions reveal more-than-human cosmoeconomic visions of oil’s potentiality. This article thus demonstrates how multiple and diverging ethical registers intersect and inform the valuation of oil.
Citation
High , M M 2019 , ' Projects of devotion : energy exploration and moral ambition in the cosmoeconomy of oil and gas in the Western United States ' , Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute , vol. 25 , no. S1 , pp. 29-46 . https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13013
Publication
Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
1359-0987Type
Journal article
Rights
© 2019 The Authors. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Royal Anthropological Institute. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Description
This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 715146. The authors also acknowledge the funding received to carry out this research from the Leverhulme Trust (ECF‐2013‐177) and the British Academy (EN150010).Collections
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