In October 2009, the Nigerian government signed a cease-fire and amnesty agreement to end a decade-long conflict with local militias in the Niger Delta agitating for greater political participation. Only one year later, as the new peace deal was celebrated as a success, the former conflict area became host to a lucrative and burgeoning illegal bunkering operation. These practices, diverting oil from the legal oil infrastructure to an alternate set of pipelines and refineries, implicated former militants, government soldiers and oil company managers alike. What linkages exist between the dissolution of a political armed social movement and the new rash of pipeline breaches? The events in the Niger Delta are often depicted as the outcome of contest to control oil rents by the state, transnational oil companies and indigenous population. However, this project explores the obverse and often overlooked dynamics undergirding eruptions of violence and protest: the ecology of economies, labor practices and practical relationships that have flourished around the oil infrastructure. Tracing the ways these complex social worlds are anchored in the material and institutional practices of production, rather than a contest for oil rents, the dissertation exposes how nodes of control in the Niger Delta are rendered increasingly porous, rather than defined by discrete actors and interests. Based on 21 months of fieldwork in the Niger Delta, I argue that the lifeworlds entwined with the technological infrastructure help unsettle the dominant arguments about rent-dependant oil states and state violence. They point instead to how practices seeking to delimit the space of extraction and operator liability such as community development initiatives, community subcontracting agreements and safety and security policies have produced hidden perils and exclusions under the rubrics of inclusion, peace and collaboration. This argument is developed over the course of several ethnographically grounded chapters. The first offers a material history of how the oil infrastructure became literally and figuratively embedded within Nigeria’s social and political life. Successive chapters follow as production practices are reconfigured institutionally, materially and discursively around a set of rogue pipelines and illegal refineries in the wake of the amnesty. I explore the constellations of oil community development regimes and the promotion of Nigeria’s “new” democracy; the explosion of oil theft and the concept of the oil economy; and increasing securitization and subcontracting practices. The dissertation demonstrates how these shifting arrangements, seeking to manage spaces of extraction, also generate alternate imaginaries of power, sovereignty and economy and that they render possible interventions, such as large-scale oil bunkering systems, which often exceed any single locus of control.

The purpose of this dissertation is to contribute to the relatively new body of critical literature in anthropology about a particular form of humanitarian action, voluntourism, in the Global South. The dissertation looks at discourses of need, community, and “us and them” as these discourses play out via social interactions involved in voluntourism. This dissertation highlights my own experiences working with a particular NGO in Western Ghana, which I call Odenkyem. My research fulfills a need for academic analysis of the role of voluntourism in humanitarianism. In the last several years, the ethics of voluntourism have been questioned by activists and academics, but this debate seems to have hinged greatly on how these endeavors bolster the white savior complex, or the fact that many of these voluntourist programs do more harm than good. While in this work I do not champion the voluntourism industry, based on my research and my own voluntourist experiences, I am convinced that the industry will continue to flourish via Westerners, particularly those from the US and Canada, looking for exotic experiences while simultaneously helping those they consider vulnerable. While some argue that voluntourism amounts to commodifying the needs of others as simplistic psycho-political packages that can be fixed in a brief volunteer vacation experience, others suggest that voluntourism can generate important learning for all involved, and that it is possible to maximize positive outcomes for both the voluntourist and the voluntoured in these endeavors. I place myself somewhere in between these two perspectives, arguing that while both internal and external critiques of voluntourism are crucial, scholars must avoid using arrogance to critique arrogance by wholly dismissing voluntourism as a potentially meaningful form of humanitarian engagement. I further argue that with proper training and critique, there are ways in which voluntourism might also serve as an effective learning experience for all involved, while maximizing positive outcomes over negative ones.

Thesis--Helsingfors. / "Literaturverzeichnis": p. [212]-216.

Inaug.-diss.--Göttingen. / Lebenslauf.

Thesis--Heidelberg. / Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references (p. 285-287).

Thesis--Heidelberg. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 285-287). Also issued in print.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Yale University. 1937. / Thesis note on p. [1]. "Reprinted ... from Ethnological studies, 7, 1938, edited and published by Walter Kaudern, PH. D., director, Gothenburg ethnographical museum." Bibliography: p. [158]-168.

Thesis--Yale University. / Caption title. Ethnological studier, 7, 1938. p.1-192.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Toronto, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

Inaug.-diss.--Göttingen. / Lebenslauf.