Book Review: The Licit Life of Capitalism: US Oil in Equatorial Guinea by Hannah Appel
"As long as we want cheap gas, democracy can’t exist." - Ed Chow, longtime Chevron executive, quoted in Ken Silverstein, The Secret World of Oil
Technically, this is my second time reading The Licit life of Capitalism by Hannah Appel. The first time I was assigned this book, I skimmed sections of chapter conclusions and could not devote the time to fully comprehend the entire text. I was in undergrad at the time and was juggling a full-time course schedule, an internship, a part-time tutoring job, and a personal life. Now, as a graduate student, I was able to devote more time towards understanding this book, although I am still poorly juggling my professional and personal lives as I did a year ago.
It constantly surprises me that this book was written in 2019, as it almost feels like a foundational and canonical text within Anthropology. Although the ethos of this text seems simple, understanding the insidiousness of capitalism and how it affects people and our most basic resource; oil, I have never read a text that so clearly illustrates the lines of connection between labor, extraction, profit, capital, etc. It's inspiring to know that the field of anthropology is still mutating, and that the best ideas haven’t all been published yet.
Appel turns the traditional narrative of ethnography on its head. Instead of focusing on an aspect of culture or people and analyzing the bigger picture through that, she analyzes the structure of capitalism itself, and aims to understand how the machine functions so well. There is no central narrative character, but instead a series of individuals whose roles within the capitalist entity are hierarchical and complex. Appel aims to decontextualize capitalism; how it allows these legal systems to spawn and breed inequality, and how we can better understand capitalism as an ongoing project that continuously aims to disconnect the poor worker from any value their labor creates.
The use of ethnographic refusal within The Licit Life of Capitalism is extremely important in that it arms the reader with information, rather than refusing to engage with an argument. Specifically, Appeal refuses to engage in the research curse theory that is prevalent with economics and political theory. This theory surmises that places that are resource rich are doomed to face economic and political unrest. In an almost comical series of assumptions, the theory states that areas that are mineral rich are doomed to suffer political unrest and economic corruption. Of course, this only applies to states and economies within the global south, and supports western intervention and influence within these economies. Thus, the blame of economic collapse and civil wars is pushed upon an imaginary villain, and not the capitalistic entities that profit from this. In Appel’s case, she refuses to engage in arguments with the “pathological African State” but with the licit forms of oppression and inequality that capitalism benefits from.
Ethnographic refusal is something that is credited to Audra Simpson in her foundational book Mohawk Interruptus. Simpson describes the refusal as a way to protect indigenous communities and their tribal sovereignty. In my experience, the argument of refusal has also been used as a way to protect anthropological subjects within asymmetrical power hierarchies. Appel takes a different approach to refusal, as she aims to have the reader understand that knowing is a mode of power. “This book advocates knowing more about that over which we need more power.” (Appel, 5). Appel understands that engaging with a certain argument gives it power and validity. Therefore, she refuses, as an anthropologist, to engage in such an argument. Yet she understands that not every reader is armed with her same knowledge, and thoroughly explains her refusal. She asserts that her true goal is to understand capitalism; how it affects people through its legalities and licit-ness, not to engage in neoliberal theories of “the African state”.
The physical location is also an important aspect in The Licit Life of Capitalism, specifically when we look at the extraction of the oil. The mechanism of extraction separates the act from the physical land. Appel refers to the killing of Ogoni activists to the visible dispossession and despoliation of the Niger Delta that occurred from on land drilling in Nigeria (Appel, 6). Even as recently as 2023, Shell is in hot water for oil spills in the Niger Delta affecting farming communities. The oil and gas industry, thus sees Nigeria as a haunting failure, and the ghost of Nigeria now haunts current production in Equatorial Guinea. Now the offshore rigs follow strict and ritualistic safety codes, with insane levels of bureaucracy, hundreds of miles from the shore. Despite the fact that offshore drilling can be more expensive, the companies prefer the secluded nature of the offshore rigs, as it keeps the company and their illegalities in the shadows. By cutting off the local populations, the companies are physically separated from their impacts on the environment and the indigenous people.
It also allows for the alienation and isolation of the numerous exploited foreign workers these companies hire. These foreign workers work long hours with minimal breaks in monotonous jobs on the rig, and live in secluded housing, until after 6–8 weeks they may return to their homes in short bursts. How can your workers unionize if they have no free time, are alienated from each other, and cannot communicate with each other? Therefore, the companies and their stakeholders are able to physically separate the company from the mainland, Equatorial Guinea, but also to separate the commodity from the local economy and the workers themselves.
In juxtaposition from these worker’s conditions, Appel also explores the enclave (Chapter 2), which houses the top employees at the oil extraction company. Most of the employees are white men, who bring their (mainly) white wives to live in a pseudo Houston suburb in Equatorial Guinea. The women remark on the constant surveillance they feel stuck within the enclave, from both themselves and the company. They also remark, and are aware, how the optics of their situation looks horrible. These wives have charitable connections and organizations at the compound for the surrounding communities, and wish to learn the local language and make friends. Yet these women are not allowed to leave the enclave, and have complicated feelings with doing public charity work as such wealthy westerners. One woman remarks on donating toys to the local children through the local school, because the image and connotation of a white woman gifting toys to young African children makes her uncomfortable (Appel, 127)
Another interesting analysis is the way race interacts with nationality within the structures of these oil and gas industries. Many of the exploited African workers often say, “We are working like Americans but being paid like Africans” (Appel, 76). These workers are expressing how they are forced to work long grueling hours of manual labor, but they are still paid pennies compared to their western (white) cohorts. As Appel interviewed the higher ups within the unnamed company, she began to see that the company hired explicitly on the basis of nationality, as racial preferences were illegal and taboo. Therefore, the majority of the wealthy employees in management hailed from western or oil rich companies, and were mainly white. Meanwhile, many of the manual workers hailed from Equatorial Guinea, other nearby African countries, as far as the Philippines. Although many of the workers knew they were being exploited in some way, many did not have the means of understanding the employment law of Equatorial Guinea, many being foreigners in the region on complicated visas. These work visas had many stipulations and regulations that could cost the worker a lot of money upfront to resolve. Despite these companies' variance of “colorblind” hiring, many of the hiring process reinforced white supremacy and its’ hierarchy, causing the manual and exploited brown and black laborers to suffer unequal treatment compared to their white colleagues.
There are many other aspects of Appel’s work that help to break down the image of neoliberalism that capitalism creates. Appel explains the intricacies of contract laws and corporations, how they are all connected or are shells of one another, in order to bypass regulations and laws that are established in the country they are extracting from. That's one of the reasons why Equatorial Guinea was chosen as the current jewel of the oil and gas industry. Equatorial Guinea was an economically vulnerable state after the post-colonialism movement in Africa, and became a breeding ground for exploitation by western economic interests. Appel breaks down how this corporate neoliberalism, and the construction of these companies, are just manifestations of modern day colonialism. Some aspects of this section were lost on me, as I am not that well-informed on economics and the business aspect of politics. Despite that, Appel creates a strong analysis of the way capitalism has created a Frankensteins’ monster of the oil industry, severing aspects of its production from the land, while also forcing its inhabitants to extract the oil at poverty wages. Appel begins her journey from a helicopter ride onto the rig, essentially from birds eye view to on the ground research. She ends it by warning that these neoliberal reforms may seem small and unreachable to many Americans, but their grip on everyone’s suffering “is as expansive as the open ocean, seen from above.” (Appel, 283). Shivers…
This book is a really fresh and interesting look at something so common in everyday life, oil and gas, and how the enterprises behind this industry further inequality in Africa for America’s cheap gas. This book is incredibly applicable to me, being a Houstonian and growing up around the oil industry. I even used to work on a road named after Schlumberger, which housed a shell of an oil and gas refinery plant. I recommend this book to those interested in learning about neoliberalism, the oil and gas industry, and how capitalism manifests inequality through things like contract laws. Appel really breaks down these complex systems into a very digestible language, thus making this book more enjoyable for those outside academia.
