Jannik Schritt

• PhD
• PostDoc Position at University of Göttingen

Following a wave of oil discoveries in Africa, Oil-Age Africa offers new perspectives and critical reflections on the prevalent academic discourses on oil in Africa. This collection brings together researchers from the social sciences to challenge simplified readings of the complex realities of oil politics, economies and societies through theoreti...

In 2011, Niger became a new oil producer. Based on an extended case study of the country’s entry into the oil-age, the book offers a nuanced examination of the local, regional, national and international dynamics that have shaped Niger’s contemporary socio-political configuration. The analysis of the political order in the oil era helps to situate...

What happens when practices are transferred from one place to another? This question lurks in the background of competing concepts of social order, modernization and globalization: Does it expand a homogeneous space where the functionality of original practices is reproduced? Or does it mix up any settled orders and create a dynamic space of hetero...

In this chapter, we compare the repertoires of mobilization for urban political riots and rural armed insurgency in Niger. Starting from the assumption that political violence can be a form of labour rather than being based on conviction and ideology, we analyse how both “violence machines” (political riots) and “war machines” (armed insurgency) ex...

Cet article traite des processus de transformation socio-économique dans la région de Zinder déclenchés par la construction de la raffinerie de pétrole depuis 2008. Alors que la plupart des gens associent au pétrole de grands espoirs d’enrichissement rapide, la dure réalité montre plutôt que la majorité des gens se plaignent au lieu d’être satisfai...

Die Globalisierung ist zur allgegenwärtigen Gewissheit geworden. Doch wie zutreffend ist das Konzept »Globalisierung«, wenn zeitgleich nationale Grenzen gestärkt und transnationale Freihandelszonen ausgeweitet werden, wenn auf unterschiedlichen scales Territorien überwunden und zugleich territoriale Abgrenzungen neu gesetzt werden? Aktuelle Verände...

We study efforts at promoting deliberative mini-publics as a model of democracy. Our focus is on practices supporting the circulation of know-how for doing mini-publics. In this paper we center on the building of infrastructures for knowledge exchange in and around a network known as Democracy R&D. This is a network of mini-publics practitioners fr...

This article analyses political speeches and practices of three Nigerien presidents between 2008 and 2011. It argues that politics in Niger are characterised by a logic of code-switching between an extroverted rhetoric to gain access to international aid, and an introverted rhetoric that critiques this very international system. This analysis makes...

Die Globalisierung ist zur allgegenwärtigen Gewissheit geworden. Doch wie zutreffend ist das Konzept »Globalisierung«, wenn zeitgleich nationale Grenzen gestärkt und transnationale Freihandelszonen ausgeweitet werden, wenn auf unterschiedlichen scales Territorien überwunden und zugleich territoriale Abgrenzungen neu gesetzt werden? Aktuelle Verände...

Wie lassen sich Energiewende, Demokratie und Ökonomie zusammendenken, um den Herausforderungen des Anthropozäns zu begegnen? Der Blogbeitrag skizziert aus einer räumlichen Perspektive, wie Energieinfrastrukturen nicht nur bestimmte Produktionsverhältnisse, sondern auch spezifische Herrschaftsmuster begünstigen. Während Kohle und insbesondere Erdöl...

At the beginning of production, the presence of oil in Niger was characterised by talking oil politics. In this talk, political actors invoked the ‘resource curse’ thesis to question the legitimacy of their opponents through the speech acts of naming, blaming and claiming. Analysing two radio debates from late 2011 about the future fuel price and t...

In a context of global inequality, the ontological status of the SARS-CoV-2 virus changes according to the socio-technical network into which it is integrated. Jannik Schritt discusses how the virus travels and translates around the globe in context-specific ways producing different effects and exacerbating pre-existing inequalities. In light of th...

This article discusses the workings of civil society and its leaders in Niger. Tracing the country's historically sedimented socio-political order, it argues that Niger's civil society is characterized by a twofold embeddedness. Since the introduction of multiparty politics in 1990, the political game in Niger has been exemplified by co-optation, b...

Das Handbuch widmet sich erstmals systematisch und vergleichend der Frage, wie soziale Bewegungen aus einer poststrukturalistischen Perspektive analysiert werden können. Die Beiträge stellen verschiedene Ansätze vor und zeigen jeweils anhand eines Beispiels aus der Forschungspraxis, wie dieser Ansatz für die Analyse sozialer Bewegungen genutzt werd...

This article focuses on ‘generic moments of becoming’, historical sedimentation and patterns of recurrent protests to explain the structural drivers that sparked the dramatic increase in urban protests and riots in Niger between 2013 and 2018. It identifies several factors in the country's socio-political configuration as particularly important for...

In this article, I discuss the methodological framework of the extended case method in light of both the findings of my case study and contemporary social theory. Taking the inauguration event of the first oil refinery in Niger in 2011 as a starting point from which to analyse the country’s socio-political order, I then extend the situation into ti...

The opening of the first oil refinery in Niger at the end of November 2011 spurred protests and violent clashes between youths and police. These protests turned into urban riots in the days following. In this extended case study, I analyse the processual, performative and affective dimensions of the protests and discuss urban protest and contentiou...

Abstract Die erweiterte Fallmethode, die von der Manchester Schule in der Ethnologie bereits in den 1950er und 1960er Jahren entwickelt wurde, um gesellschaftliche Konflikte anhand von (Groß-) Ereignissen exemplarisch zu untersuchen, findet in der Protestforschung bislang kaum explizite Anwendung. Der vorliegende Artikel veranschaulicht am Beispie...

This paper shows how the development of oil in Niger and Uganda was coupled with standardization and dis/entanglement practices. In Niger, actors contested the lack of standards in the Chinese oil industry but capitalized on the opportunities that linkages to the industry had produced. In Uganda, by contrast, local entrepreneurs objected to the ins...

In this article, we analyse the political and social process through which Niger has emerged as a new oil state since 2008. Instead of viewing the situation as a clear-cut resource-curse scenario, we see oil as an important , but by no means determining factor in the country's current political workings. Analysing the main features and narratives o...

The article focuses on disputes and protests around the inauguration of Niger’s first oil refinery in late 2011. Drawing on theory of the resource curse and the literature on African politics and the state, it analyzes the transformative potential of oil in Nigerien politics and society, showing how oil was received in an already well-structured po...

https://brill.com/abstract/book/edcoll/9789004367012/BP000015.xml

This article explores the emergence of public controversies around the development of a new technological zone and its associated energy infrastructure. It focuses on the moment when Niger became a new oil producer in 2011, and traces its historical genesis, to show how new oil-related infrastructures were contested in a series of socio-technical d...

The article focuses on spatializing struggles in relation to Niger's new oil infrastructure and shows how it turned public and political. Two different but interconnected perspectives are employed: first, a historical perspective illuminates how economic theories of growth, visions of industrialization, desires for energy autonomy, political projec...

The rentier state and resource curse concepts understand oil and uranium as fixed resources generating economic rents. In doing so, these theories largely ignore the social, economic, political and technological arrangements essential for a material substance like oil or uranium to become a resource. By comparing the diachronic and synchronic entan...

The article examines the spatial, economic, political and socio-cultural transformations induced in the process of Niger becoming a new oil producer in 2011. It does so by analyzing entanglements of Western and Chinese ‘oil zones’ in Niger, which are understood as trans-territorial spaces of assemblage. I argue that the specific properties of these...

In many Muslim countries in West Africa and beyond, “protests against Charlie Hebdo” occurred when citizens went out on the streets following Friday prayers on 16 January 2015. However, only in Niger did these protests turn extremely violent. This report analyses the social, political and religious workings behind the protests in Niger. In doing so...

Im internationalen Wettrennen um Afrikas Ressourcen ist auch Niger ein Erdölstaat geworden. Was bedeutet dies für die Gesellschaft und die Politik in dem westafrikanischen Staat? Aus einer ethnologischen Perspektive wird die materielle und ideologische Bedeutung des Erdöls in den politischen Auseinandersetzungen auf nationaler und regionaler Ebene...

This chapter examines new forms of transnational governmentality after 9/11, focusing on Niger and the “global war on terror” in the Sahel. Launching the Pan Sahel Initiative (PSI) and later AFRICOM as new political strategies combining counterterrorism initiatives with energy security issues, the United States argued for a military base in Niger i...