Reading Bruneian Petrofiction: How We Became Addicted to Oil
Science and Technology in Asia @ Harvard
Rinni Haji Amran – Reading Bruneian Petrofiction: How We Became Addicted to Oil
March 12, 10:30 am ET over Zoom
At a time of a rising global push towards decarbonization and energy transition towards renewable sources, it is imperative to trace the various localized obstacles in reaching such goals. While Brunei has made concerted efforts towards limiting carbon emissions and raising national awareness of climate change, these steps and conversations rarely directly address the link between the nation’s carbon emissions, its politico-economic dependence on the oil and gas industry, and the sociocultural factors that help to solidify this dependence. Through contextualized readings of selected Bruneian texts, this paper will attempt to trace the ways in which that dependence has its roots in the British Residency period and the growth of the national oil and gas industry, particularly the decline and devaluing of local expertise and practices to do with the land and seas through the transition away from a subsistence-based economy to a rentier state economy, land development policies, and the development of an education system that caters to the fortification of the oil and gas industry. For an effective energy transition away from fossil fuels, then, it is necessary to assess the sociocultural values attached directly or indirectly to the place of oil in the nation.
About our speaker: Rinni Haji Amran is a MSCA Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oslo, currently researching Bruneian petrofiction. She is also a lecturer in English Literature at Universiti Brunei Darussalam.
Registration: https://scholar.harvard.edu/seow/STinAsia
Contact Information
Victor Seow
Associate Professor of the History of Science
Harvard University
seow@fas.harvard.edu