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Podcast: New Books in Economic and Business History
Episode: Andrea Wright, "Unruly Labor: A History of Oil in the Arabian Sea" (Stanford UP, 2024)
Description: Unruly Labor: A History of Oil in the Arabian Sea (Stanford UP, 2024) by Andrea Wright offers a critical and nuanced examination of the labor regimes that sustain the oil economies of the Arabian Peninsula. Challenging dominant narratives centered on state-building, elite wealth, and resource control, Wright focuses on the transnational laborers whose work has been essential to the region’s economic development. She explores how oil extractive economies depend not only on physical resources but also on the regulation, mobility, and discipline of migrant workers, particularly those from South Asia.The book traces the histories of labor migr...