Settling the Boom: The Sites and Subjects of Bakken Oil

Paperback / softback

Main Details

Title Settling the Boom: The Sites and Subjects of Bakken Oil
Authors and Contributors      Edited by Mary E. Thomas
Edited by Bruce Braun
Physical Properties
Format:Paperback / softback
Pages:248
Dimensions(mm): Height 216,Width 140
Category/GenreHuman geography
ISBN/Barcode 9781517913878
ClassificationsDewey:338.272820978473
Audience
General
Professional & Vocational
Illustrations 36 black and white illustrations

Publishing Details

Publisher University of Minnesota Press
Imprint University of Minnesota Press
NZ Release Date 11 July 2023
Publication Country United States

Description

Examines how settler colonial and sexist infrastructures and narratives order a resource boom Over the past decade, new oil plays have unsettled U.S. energy landscapes and imaginaries. Settling the Boom studies how the disruptive forces of an oil boom in the northern Great Plains are contained through the extension of settler temporalities, reassertions of heteropatriarchy, and the tethering of life to the volatility of oil and its cruel optimisms. This collection reveals the results of sustained research in Williston, North Dakota, the epicenter of the "Bakken Boom." While the boom brought a rapid influx of capital and workers, the book questions simple timelines of before and after. Instead, Settling the Boom demonstrates how the unsettling forces of an oil play resolve through normative narratives and material and affective infrastructures that support settler colonialism's violent extension and its gendered orders of time and space. Considering a wide range of evidence, from urban and regional policy, interviews with city officials, media, photography, and film, these essays analyze the ongoing material, aesthetic, and narrative ways of life and land in the Bakken. Contributors: Morgan Adamson, Macalester College; Kai Bosworth, Virginia Commonwealth U; Thomas S. Davis, Ohio State U; Jessica Lehman, Durham U.

Author Biography

Mary E. Thomas is associate professor of women's, gender, and sexuality studies at The Ohio State University. She is coauthor of Urban Geography: A Critical Introduction and author of Multicultural Girlhood: Racism, Sexuality, and the Conflicted Spaces of Urban Education. Bruce Braun is professor of geography at the University of Minnesota. He is coeditor of Political Matter: Technoscience, Democracy, and Public Life and author of The Intemperate Rainforest: Nature, Culture, and Power on Canada's West Coast, both from Minnesota.