The Shadow of an Oil State: James Ferguson and Africa Praxis

Introduction: Ferguson's enduring influenceJames Ferguson occupies a distinctive position in Africanist scholarship.For decades, his work has shaped the intellectual imagination of colleagues and students alike, establishing a foundation for the anthropology of development while influencing debates across multiple disciplines.From The Anti-Politics Machine to Global Shadows and "Seeing Like an Oil Company," Ferguson has shown how development projects, global capital, and extractive industries generate new forms of political and social life (1994).His influence on the theory and ethnography of Africa has remained an epistemological foundation in the interdisciplinary study of the continent.His ethnographic richness was what first drew me to his work in graduate school, and his insights continue to ground my own research.This essay reflects on Ferguson's influence by returning to these three iconic works (The Anti-Politics Machine, Global Shadows, and "Seeing Like an Oil Company") and considering their relevance for contemporary questions of resource extraction.I take as my point of departure my recent ethnographic fieldwork in the Niger Delta, where abandoned oil infrastructures have become both material ruins and symbolic sites of everyday life.Linking Ferguson's concepts of incorporation, abandonment, and shadow economies with Yorùbá notions of Òjìji (shadow) and Ibojì (grave), I ask: what happens to oil infrastructures and the communities around them as we enter a post-carbon era?What forms of social and political life emerge in the spaces left behind by extraction?By situating these questions alongside Ferguson's scholarship, I aim to show how his work continues to illuminate the precarity and creativity of African communities navigating the ruins of development.