Based on long term ethnographic fieldwork and archival research into multiple dimensions of the US "shale renaissance"—including petroleum geology, oilfield work, energy finance, oil economics, environmental politics, and corporate forecasting—his work analyzes the massively-distributed project to realize a new form of hydrocarbon energy in the North American subsoil, and further, to extend the new extractive regime across the globe. The resulting manuscript builds on this empirical research and on traditions of political anthropology, the anthropology of capitalism, and science and technology studies to re-conceptualize "geopolitics" in view of contemporary economic and environmental volatility. With CISSR support, Cameron will examine prospective shale energy extraction in Indonesia.

Biography:

Cameron Hu is a doctoral candidate in anthropology at the University of Chicago. His research explores the political-economic and techno-scientific logics that shape the global frontier in "unconventional" oil extraction.