Oil in Chad. About the Interlocking of Land, Kin, Money and the Production of Order and Disorder
Andrea Behrends
Halle University, Germany
Specific to Chad, a World Bank devised model for the first time aimed to promote development-oriented oil revenue distribution. The talk will address a classical anthropological issue – money in relation to kin alliances and land ownership – to find out how oil-related money has affected the population living in the southern Chadian oil production zone. Two examples help to discuss this question: 1) salaries from pipeline construction and their effects on marriage payments and 2) the oil companies’ compensation payments for land loss and their effects on land use and kin alliances in the region. The argument will be that oil money brings about a particular kind of disruption. The analysis will show that these disruptions were already inherent in the highly acclaimed World Bank oil model itself.
May 13, 2015