This is a really interesting article, although it only briefly goes over the history of oil discovery in the region. It talks a lot about the effects of oil on the state and briefly about rentierism. I think its interesting when he points out that for many of the ME states, especially the small Gulf ones, the discovery of oil coincided with the making of the modern state. In effect, its difficult to separate the effects of oil since it was an inherent part of that state's rise. He also goes into oils effects on the economies and talks about the difference between "production" states and "allocation" states. I need to look into the article more deeply, but for now it provides a good brief description of the effect of oil now in various sectors and what kind of role it will play in the future.
Article is too long to post and jump break still isn't working for me, see article below:
http://www.brandeis.edu/crown/publications/meb/MEB24.pdf
I also kind of like the way he set up his paper, maybe this is a structure we can look into??
"Oil was found at Masjed Soleyman in southwestern Iran on May 26, 1908, and three years later was piped down to a newly built refinery at Abadan on the Iranian side of the Shatt alrab, not many miles below Basra." (Owen 2008, pg. 1)
ReplyDeleteI've got too much reading to catch up on too keep any insightful notes on this, but it's all very applicable to our research paper, awesome find!