Grassroots Politics and Oil Culture in Venezuela: The Revolutionary Petro-State

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 Chvez 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 Strnen 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, Strnen explores the complexities and challenges in fostering deep social and political change. Iselin sedotter Strnen is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen, Norway, and Affiliated Researcher at the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI), Norway.