Seminar: "No friends but the mountains. Extractivism and social control in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq” by Alessandro Tinti

Title: “No friends but the mountains. Extractivism and social control in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq”

Speaker: Alessandro Tinti, International Relations at the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa

Moderator: Mariana Walter, ICTA-UAB

Date: Thursday, July 12 2018

Time: 10.30h 

Room: Z/023 Espai Montseny

 

Since the collapse of the Ba’athist regime in 2003, the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) has cast itself as a new energy frontier in order to support a historically contested self-determination. Resource nationalism is central in the Kurdish quest for international recognition, but the rise of a de facto petro-state has fuelled conflicts over identity and territory, inside and beyond the region, thus undermining the nation-building effort. Based on ethnographic fieldwork recently completed across the KRI, the seminar illustrates the mechanisms through which a rentier, patrimonial, and violent oil economy has become a tool of social control securing the political-military establishment.     

 

Bio

Alessandro Tinti is a Ph.D. student in International Relations at the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa. He holds a MA in International Relations and a BA in Political Science, both from the University of Florence. His doctoral project focuses on oil politics in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, where he has conducted field research over the last couple of years and is non-resident fellow at the American University of Iraq-Sulaimani. His research interests lie at the intersections of conflict and security studies, political geography, and political ecology.