Grassroots Politics and Oil Culture in Venezuela The Revolutionary Petro-State [Hardcover]

This book is published open access under a CC BY 4.0 license.

This book presents an ethnographic study of how grassroots activism in Venezuela during the Ch?vez presidency can be understood in relation to the country's history as a petro-state. Taking the contested relationship between the popular sectors and the Venezuelan state as a point of departure, Iselin ?sedotter Str?nen explores how notions such as class, race, state, bureaucracy, popular politics, capitalism, neoliberalism, consumption, oil wealth, and corruption gained salience in the Bolivarian process. A central argument is that the Bolivarian process was an attempt to challenge the practices, ideas, and values inherited from Venezuela's historical development as an oil-producing state. Drawing on rich ethnographic material from Caracas' shantytowns, state institutions, as well as everyday life and public culture, Str?nen explores the complexities and challenges in fostering deep social and political change. 

1. Introduction: Understanding Venezuela Before and Under Ch?vez

Section one: For years, the social movements were treated as hordes, as unruly negros

2. Barrio Lives and Histories

3. Contested Community Politics

Section two: If we dont transform the state, we keep strengthening the old

4. The State as a Battlefield

5. Popularizing the State

Section three: Here in Venezuela, we have always been quite consumista

6. Moralities, Money, and Extractive Capitalism

7. Collective Consumption and the Magical Stalq