Governing relations between people and things: Citizenship, territory, and the political economy of petroleum in Ecuador

Ecuador is the fifth largest producer of petroleum in Latin America. Petroleum has brought prosperity to many Ecuadorians, effectively becoming the nation's most important natural resource. It also has inspired intense political mobilizations. While the best known of these are led by Amazonian indigenous peoples, petroleum has also generated other important but not as well-recognized mobilizations. This paper focuses on the political mobilization of Amazonian agricultural settlers and petroleum workers in relation to petroleum. While these actors do not share common livelihood or cultural struggles, the discourses that frame their mobilizations in relation to petroleum have common elements. Their dissatisfaction with the political economy of petroleum in the 1990s and 2000s, for example, generated high profile protests and civil unrest that centered not on stopping production, but on demanding a more ‘responsible management’ of petroleum by the state. The paper brings together political economy, mechanisms of subject formation, and the material qualities of petroleum to explore how petroleum production in Ecuador has shaped common views on citizenship among these actors that center on petroleum as a site of regulation of social life.