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Accepted Paper:
White Oil – Responsibility and the Corporeal Limits of Expertise in the US Energy Capital
Sean Field
(University of St Andrews)
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on ethnographic field research that began in late-2018, I contrast the voices of white corporate leaders calling for racial reforms with the experiences of non-white interlocutors inside the US hydrocarbon industry.
Paper long abstract:
Narratives from the world's leading hydrocarbon companies and financiers on the death of George Floyd serve as my point of departure to explore conceptualizations of responsibility in Houston’s hydrocarbon sector. Drawing on ethnographic field research that began in 2018, I contrast the voices of white corporate leaders calling for racial reforms with the experiences of non-white interlocutors inside the industry. The experiences of non-white interlocutors illuminate their idiosyncratic entanglements with responsibility and the corporal limits of their expertise. I contribute to the anthropological literatures on responsibility, expertise and energy by examining racial disparities inside Houston’s hydrocarbon sector. I suggest that the lack of corporate accountability for these disparities forms a broader pattern of responsibility side-stepping, which forecloses possibilities for change.