LMN is delighted to announce our fourth Resisting Mining Book Club of 2025 with guest speaker Adam Hanieh, who will be speaking about his new book Crude Capitalism: Oil, Corporate Power, and the Making of the World Market (Verso Books, 2024).
About the book
Crude Capitalism is an expansive history that traces the hidden connections between oil and capitalism from the late 1800s to the current climate crisis.
Beyond simplistic narratives that frame oil as ‘prize’ or ‘curse’, Crude Capitalism uncovers the surprising ways that oil is woven into the fabric of our modern world: the rise of an American-centered global order; the breakdown of Empire and anti-colonial rebellion; contemporary finance and US dollar hegemony; debt and militarism; and the emergence of new forms of synthetic consumption. Much more than an energy source or transport fuel, oil has a foundational place in all aspects of contemporary life – no challenge to the fossil fuel industry can be effective without taking this fact seriously.
Crude Capitalism maps the varied geographies of oil, including the rise of OPEC, the importance of revolutionary and Post-Soviet Russia, the crucial role of African upstream reserves, and the new petrochemical circuits that link the Middle East, China, and East Asia. The book provides an original and fine-grained empirical analysis of corporate ownership and control, including refining and petrochemicals.
By exposing these structures of power and placing oil in capitalism, the book makes an essential contribution to debates around oil-dependency and the struggle for climate justice.
Adam will give an introductory lecture which will be followed by a Q&A. You do not need to have read the book to attend this meeting. However, if you want to purchase a copy or read an extract, all registered attendees will be sent materials.
About the author
Adam Hanieh is Professor of Political Economy and Global Development at the Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, and Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute of International and Area Studies at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. As a leading scholar of Middle East political economy, Hanieh’s research has particularly focused on the dynamics of class and state formation in the six oil-rich Gulf Arab monarchies, and the profound impact that Gulf capitalism has had on socio-economic and political developments in the wider Middle East. In addition to his work on the Gulf, Hanieh has written extensively on Palestine, and was a founding member of the Centre for Palestine Studies at SOAS, University of London.