Abstract
This article explores masculinities and changes in men’s lives in the rural oil fields of Chad during the period of an oil and pipeline project described by the World Bank as a “model” for oil-as-development. In many parts of Africa, private sector investment is concentrated in the extractive industries, especially oil and gas projects. Africa’s emerging oil economies entail new institutional configurations, or what Michael Watts called an “oil complex,” that challenge antecedent norms and forms of identity. In this article, I describe the expectations, desires, and experiences of three distinct groups of men—those who found temporary employment on the project, those who continued to make a living from farming while contending with land expropriation, and those who migrated to oil field towns in search of work—to make three general points about the oil complex and masculinities in Chad. The structure of the global oil industry meant that local men who found jobs on the project could act as breadwinners and patriarchs, but only temporarily; local workers struggled post-employment with their exclusion from the possibilities associated with the project. Men who never found jobs continued to eke out a living from the land, but state-of-the-art policies governing land expropriation led simultaneously to conflict in families and greater economic interdependence among family members. Finally, in the low-media environment of the oil field region, ideas and images about sex, sexuality, and love emanating from the transient and hyper-masculine global oil industry workforce served as models for landless young men who migrated to oil field towns and who, in the absence of work, sought to transform themselves into objects of desire through the mediation of pharmaceuticals.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Aboim, Sofia. 2008. Men between worlds: Changing masculinities in urban Maputo. Men and Masculinities 12(2): 201–224.
Appel, Hannah. 2012. Offshore work: Oil, modularity, and the how of capitalism in Equatorial Guinea. American Ethnologist 39(4): 692–709.
Appel, Hannah, Arthur Mason, and Michael Watts (ed). 2015. Subterranean estates: Life worlds of oil and gas. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Barclay, Robert and George Koppert. 2007. Chad resettlement and compensation plan evaluation study. Paris: Group d’Etude des Populations Forestières Equatoriales (GEPFE).
Brown, Ellen P. 1991. Sex and starvation: Famine and three Chadian societies. In The political economy of African famine, ed. Richard E. Downs, Donna O. Kerner, and Stephen P. Reyna, 293–321. Langhorne, PA: Gordon and Breach Science Publishers.
Bryceson, Deborah F. 1999. African rural labor, income diversification and livelihood approaches: A long-term development perspective. Review of African Political Economy 26(80): 171–189.
Bryson, John R. 2007. The “second” global shift: The offshoring or global sourcing of corporate services and the rise of distanciated emotional labour. Geografiska Annaler 89B(S1): 31–43.
Butler, Judith. 2007. Gender trouble. New York: Routledge.
Cole, Jennifer. 2005. The Jaombilo of Tamatave (Madagascar), 1992-2004: Reflections on youth and globalization. Journal of Social History 38(4): 891–914.
Connell, Raewyn W. 1995. Masculinities. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Cornwall, Andrea. 2003. To be a man is more than a day’s work: Shifting ideals of manliness in Ado-Odo, Southwest Nigeria. In Men and masculinities in modern Africa, ed. Lisa A. Lindsay, and Stephan Miescher, 230–248. Princeton: Heinemann.
Cornwall, Andrea, and Nancy Lindisfarne. 1994. Dislocating masculinity: Gender, power and anthropology. In Dislocating masculinity: Comparative ethnographies, ed. Andrea Cornwall, and Nancy Lindisfarne, 11–47. London: Routledge.
Cross, Jamie. 2011. Detachment as a corporate ethic: Materializing CSR in the diamond supply chain. Focaal: Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 2011(60): 34–46.
Cuvelier, Jeroen. 2014. Work and masculinity in Katanga’s artisanal mines. Africa Spectrum 49(2): 3–26.
Dolan, Catherine. 2012. The new face of development: The “bottom of the pyramid” entrepreneurs. Anthropology Today 28(4): 3–7.
Dolan, Catherine, and Linda Scott. 2009. Lipstick evangelism: Avon trading circles and gender empowerment in South Africa. Gender and Development 17(2): 203–218.
Ehrenreich, Barbara, and Arlie Hochschild (ed). 2004. Global woman: Nannies, maids and sex workers in the new economy. New York: Henry Holt and Company.
Ely, Robin J., and Debra E. Meyerson. 2010. An organizational approach to undoing gender: The unlikely case of offshore oil platforms. Research in Organizational Behavior 30: 3–34.
Enloe, Cynthia. 2011. Bananas, beaches, and bases. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Esso Exploration and Production Chad, Inc. (EEPCI). 1999. Environmental management plan – Chad portion. May. http://web.worldbank.org/archive/website01210/WEB/0__CO-44.HTM. Accessed 16 August 2016.
Esso Exploration and Production Chad, Inc. (EEPCI). 2010. Chad export project: Project update no. 29. http://cdn.exxonmobil.com/~/media/global/files/chad-cameroon/29_allchapters.pdf. Accessed 16 August 2016.
Esso Exploration and Production Inc. (EEPCI). 2001. Chad/Cameroon development project, Report no. 5, fourth quarter 2001, annual summary 2001. http://www.essochad.com/Chad-English/PA/Files/01.pdf. Accessed 16 August 2016.
Esso Exploration and Production Inc. (EEPCI). 2003a. Chad/Cameroon development project, Report no. 13, fourth quarter 2003, annual report 2003. http://www.essochad.com/Chad-English/PA/Files/13_allchapters.pdf. Accessed 16 August 2016.
Esso Exploration and Production Inc. (EEPCI). 2003b. Chad/Cameroon development project, Report no. 10, first quarter 2003. http://www.essochad.com/Chad-English/PA/Newsroom/TD_ProgressReports3.aspx. Accessed 17 October 2015.
Esso Exploration and Production Inc. (EEPCI). 2003c. Chad/Cameroon development project, Report no. 11, second quarter 2003. http://www.essochad.com/Chad-English/PA/Newsroom/TD_ProgressReports3.aspx. Accessed 17 October 2015.
Esso Exploration and Production Inc. (EEPCI). 2004. Chad/Cameroon development project, Report no. 17, fourth quarter 2004, annual report 2004. http://essochad.com/Chad-English/PA/Files/17_ch1.pdf. Accessed 16 August 2016.
Esson, James. 2013. A body and a dream at a vital conjuncture: Ghanaian youth, uncertainty and the allure of football. Geoforum 47: 84–92.
Ferguson, James. 1999. Expectations of modernity: Myths and meanings of urban life on the Zambian Copperbelt. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Ferguson, James. 2005. Seeing like an oil company: Space, security, and global capital in neoliberal Africa. American Anthropologist 107(3): 377–382.
Ferguson, James. 2006. Global shadows: Africa in the neoliberal world order. Durham: Duke University Press.
Ferguson, James. 2007. Formalities of poverty: Thinking about social assistance in neoliberal South Africa. African Studies Review 50(2): 71–86.
Fernandez-Kelly, Patricia. 2008. Gender and economic change in the United States and Mexico, 1900-2000. American Behavioral Scientist 52(3): 377–404.
Filteau, Matthew R. 2014. Who are those guys? Constructing the oilfield’s new dominant masculinity. Men and Masculinities 17(4): 396–416.
Filteau, Matthew R. 2015. A localized masculine crisis: Local men’s subordination within the Marcellus Shale region’s masculine structure. Rural Sociology 80(4): 431–455.
Freeman, Carla. 1993. Designing women: Corporate discipline and Barbados’s off-shore pink-collar sector. Cultural Anthropology 8(2): 169–186.
Gibbs, Tim. 2014. Becoming a “big man” in neo-liberal South Africa: Migrant masculinities in the minibus-taxi industry. African Affairs 113(452): 431–448.
Groes-Green, Christian. 2009. Hegemonic and subordinated masculinities: Class, violence and sexual performance among young Mozambican men. Nordic Journal of African Studies 18(4): 286–304.
Guyer, Jane. 2002. Briefing: The Chad-Cameroon petroleum and pipeline development project. African Affairs 101(402): 109–115.
Guyer, Jane, and Pauline Peters. 1987. Conceptualizing the household: Issues of theory and policy in Africa. Development and Change 18(2): 197–214.
Hearn, Jeff. 2014. Introduction: International studies on men, masculinities, and gender equality. Men and Masculinities 17(5): 455–466.
Hodgson, Dorothy L. 1999. “Once intrepid warriors”: Modernity and the production of Maasai masculinities. Ethnology 38(2): 121–150.
Hollander, Theo. 2014. Men, masculinities, and the demise of a state: Examining masculinities in the context of economic, political, and social crisis in a small town in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Men and Masculinities 17(4): 417–439.
KPMG. 2013. Oil and gas in Africa: Africa’s reserves, potential and prospects. https://www.kpmg.com/Africa/en/IssuesAndInsights/Articles-Publications/Documents/Oil%20and%20Gas%20in%20Africa.pdf. Accessed 16 August 2016.
Kristeva, Julia. 1982. Powers of horror: An essay on abjection. New York: Columbia University Press.
Leonard, Lori. 2016. Life in the time of oil: A pipeline and poverty in Chad. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Loe, Meika. 2001. Fixing broken masculinity: Viagra as a technology for the production of gender and sexuality. Sexuality and Culture 5(3): 97–125.
Magnant, Jean-Pierre. 1986. Terre Sara terre Tchadienne. Paris: L’Harmattan.
Magrin, Gérard. 2001. Le sud du Tchad en mutation des champs de coton aux sirènes de l’or noir. Montpellier: CIRAD.
Masquelier, Adeline. 2005. The scorpion’s sting: Youth, marriage and the struggle for social maturity in Niger. Royal Anthropological Institute 11(1): 59–83.
Masquelier, Adeline. 2013. Teatime: Boredom and the temporalities of young men in Niger. Africa 83(3): 470–491.
Matlon, Joanna. 2011. Il Est garçon: Marginal Abidjanais masculinity and the politics of representation. Poetics 39(5): 380–406.
Matlon, Joanna. 2014. Narratives of modernity, masculinity, and citizenship amid crisis in Abidjan’s Sorbonne. Antipode 46(3): 717–735.
Miller, Gloria. 2004. Frontier masculinity in the oil industry: The experience of women engineers. Gender, Work and Organization 11(1): 47–73.
Mitchell, Timothy. 2011. Carbon democracy: Political power in the age of oil. London: Verso.
Mojola, Sanyu A. 2014. Providing women, kept men: Doing masculinity in the wake of the African HIV/AIDS pandemic. Signs 39(2): 341–363.
Osirim, Mary J. 2003. Carrying the burdens of structural adjustment and globalization: Women and micro-enterprise development in urban Zimbabwe. International Sociology 18(3): 535–558.
Palermo, Hernán M. 2015. “Machos que se la bancan”: Masculinidad y disciplina fabril en la industria petrolera argentina. Desacatos 47: 98–210.
Perry, Donna. 2005. Wolof women, economic liberalization, and the crisis of masculinity in rural Senegal. Ethnology 44(3): 207–226.
Prügl, Elisabeth. 2015. Neoliberalising feminism. New Political Economy 20(4): 614–631.
Pype, Katrien. 2007. Fighting boys, strong men and gorillas: Notes on the imagination of masculinities in Kinshasa. Africa 77(2): 250–271.
Salzinger, Leslie. 1997. From high heels to swathed bodies: Gendered meanings under production in Mexico’s export processing industry. Feminist Studies 23(3): 549–574.
Salzinger, Leslie. 2004. From gender as object to gender as verb: Rethinking how global restructuring happens. Critical Sociology 30(1): 43–62.
Silberschmidt, Margrethe. 2001. Disempowerment of men in rural and urban East Africa: Implications for male identity and sexual behavior. World Development 29(4): 657–671.
United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). 2013. World investment report 2013: Global value chains: Investment and trade for development. New York and Geneva: United Nations.
United States Energy Information Administration (US EIA). 2013. Emerging East Africa energy. https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/analysis_includes/special_topics/East_Africa/eeae.pdf. Accessed 16 August 2016.
Vijayakumar, Gowri. 2013. “I’ll be like water”: Gender, class, and flexible aspirations at the edge of India’s knowledge economy. Gender and Society 27(6): 777–798.
Walker, Liz. 2005. Men behaving differently: South African men since 1994. Culture, Health & Sexuality 7(3): 225–238.
Watts, Michael. 2006. The sinister political life of community: Economies of violence and governable spaces in the Niger Delta, Nigeria. In The seductions of community: Emancipations, oppressions, quandaries, ed. Gerald W. Creed, 101–142. Santa Fe, NM: SAR Press.
Weiss, Brad. 2009. Street dreams and hip hop barbershops: Global fantasy in urban Tanzania. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
World Bank. 2000. The Chad-cameroon petroleum development and pipeline project: concept paper. http://web.worldbank.org/archive/website01210/WEB/0__CO-25.HTM. Accessed 16 August 2016.
World Bank Group. 2004. Striking a better balance: The World Bank Group and extractive industries: The final report of the extractive industries review. September 17. http://siteresources.worldbank.org/INTOGMC/Resources/finaleirmanagementresponse.pdf. Accessed 16 August 2016.
Wyrod, Robert. 2016. AIDS and masculinity in the African city: Privilege, inequality, and modern manhood. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Acknowledgments
This article is based on long-term field research that was generously supported by the National Science Foundation and its Human and Social Dynamics Program (BCS-0527280) and Law and Social Sciences program (SES-0721712); the New Century Scholars Program of the J. William Fulbright Foundation, the Health, Environment, and Economic Development (HEED) Program of the Fogarty International Center at the National Institutes of Health (R21 TW006518-01); and the Population Center and the Center for a Livable Future at Johns Hopkins University. I am grateful to two anonymous reviewers for their comments on an early draft of this article and to Ngondoloum Salathiel for his assistance with field research.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
All names used in this paper are pseudonyms.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Leonard, L. Pharmaceutically-Made Men: Masculinities in Chad’s Emergent Oil Economy. Qual Sociol 39, 421–437 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-016-9343-6
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-016-9343-6