Descrizione del progetto
Una nuova prospettiva su una delle più antiche città petrolifere del mondo
Le città possono impiegare molti anni per crescere con lo sviluppo della società. Tuttavia, la scoperta di risorse naturali come il petrolio può portare a un rapido sviluppo urbano. Quando il boom delle risorse alla fine si esaurisce, tali città di solito decadono. Non è stato così per la «città petrolifera» di Baku, in Azerbaigian. Essendo una delle prime e più significative città del mondo di questo tipo, negli ultimi 150 anni Baku ha perpetuato la sua dipendenza dal petrolio. Eppure, si sa poco dell’eredità della città. Il progetto BAKOIL, finanziato dall’UE, ricorrerà all’etnografia e all’analisi testuale per esaminare le narrazioni ufficiali e non ufficiali della continuità urbana basata sulla produzione di petrolio. Si concentrerà inoltre su come l’identità urbana basata sul petrolio influisce sull’immaginazione di un futuro post-petrolio.
Obiettivo
This research project will explore the construction of ‘oil city’ narratives in Baku, Azerbaijan. Baku is one of the earliest and historically most significant oil cities in the world. Despite this important legacy, there has been little scholarly attention to the ideological and cultural meanings of oil in different urban milieus. Addressing this gap in scholarship, this study aims to deepen scholarly understanding of the constitution of oil urbanism and its implications for post-oil future. The development of many cities that are linked to oil production is dependent upon the economic cycles of boom and busts of the industry. Typically, oil cities rapidly grow during a boom, and decline during a bust. Few cities are able to reinvent themselves after a bust, either by diversifying their economies or assuming the role of a technological hub for the industry. Baku is unusual among the world's oil cities, as it neither declined nor reinvented itself, but has perpetuated its dependence on oil for the last 150 years and continued to strengthen its identity as ‘the oil city’.
Using a combination of ethnography and textual analysis, this study aims to provide a detailed ethnographic analysis of how Baku’s oil city identity has been constructed and reproduced in official and unofficial discourses by variously positioned professionals involved in memory-making, either directly (museum workers and urban heritage activists) or indirectly (oil industry professionals; city planners; tour guides). The main research objectives are: 1) to examine the official and unofficial narratives of urban continuity based on oil production in their socio-cultural context 2) to explore the practices of collective remembering and forgetting in constructing the narratives of Baku as a historical center of oil production and 3) to explore how an urban identity based on oil affects the imagination of a post-oil future among these groups.
Campo scientifico
Parole chiave
Programma(i)
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Meccanismo di finanziamento
MSCA-IF - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowships (IF)Coordinatore
KY16 9AJ St Andrews
Regno Unito