Ryan Cecil Jobson - "The Petro-State Masquerade" - Michael Watts & William Balan-Gaubert

Ryan Cecil Jobson will discuss Petro-State Masquerade: Oil, Sovereignty, and Power in Trinidad and Tobago. He will be joined in discussion by Michael Watts and William Balan-Gaubert. A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion.
At the Seminary Co-op.
RSVP Here (Please note that your RSVP is requested but not required).
About the book: The Petro-state Masquerade is a historical and ethnographic study of the fraught relationship between fossil fuels and political power in Trinidad and Tobago. Anthropologist Ryan Cecil Jobson traces how a model of governance fashioned during prior oil booms is imperiled by declining fossil fuel production and a loss of state control.
After more than a century of commercial oil production, Trinidad and Tobago instructs us to regard the petro-state as less a permanent form than a fragile relation between fossil fuels and sovereign authority. Foregrounding the concurrent masquerades of oil workers, activists, and Carnival revelers, Jobson argues that the promise of decolonization lies in the disarticulation of natural resources, capital, and political power by ordinary people in the Caribbean.
About the author: Ryan Cecil Jobson is the Neubauer Family Assistant Professor in the Departments of Anthropology and Race, Diaspora & Indigeneity at the University of Chicago. His research is preoccupied with questions of energy, sovereignty, race, and capitalism in the Caribbean and the Americas. His first book, The Petro-State Masquerade: Oil, Sovereignty, and Power in Trinidad and Tobago, was published by the University of Chicago Press in December 2024. His writing is featured in American Anthropologist, American Ethnologist, Current Anthropology, The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, and Small Axe. He currently serves as coeditor-in-chief of Transforming Anthropology, the flagship journal of the Association of Black Anthropologists.
About the interlocutors: A native of Haiti, William Balan-Gaubert is a Haitian History & Society Scholar in Residence and Lecturer at the University of Chicago. With extensive studies in Haiti, France, and the United States, he focuses on and explores Haitian Vodun as both cultural memory and ethical life. Through numerous lectures and writings, Balan-Gaubert has significantly contributed to the understanding and appreciation of Haitian Vodun and its profound impact on societal and cultural dynamics.
Michael Watts is the Class of 1963 Professor Emeritus of Geography and Development Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. Across his storied career, he has published widely on Nigeria and the Niger Delta. For ten years he served as director of the Institute of International Studies, which promotes cross-disciplinary research and training on global issues. He is the author of Silent Violence: Food, Famine, and Peasantry in Northern Nigeria (1983) and Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in The Niger Delta (2008). His work has been recognized by the Guggenheim Foundation and the Royal Geographical Society.