Extraction from close-up : Critical notes on the day-to-day work of monitoring flows
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/issn.2179-0892.geousp.2023.210701Keywords:
activity, work, extraction, climate, oilAbstract
In this article, we analyse the work of oil industry operators on offshore platforms. We show that the business of extraction requires a multitude of technical skills. The fact that these skills are deployed just-in-time within a highly complex division of labour leads operators to focus their attention primarily on their immediate work activities, to the cost of a genuine problematization of their distant material implications and purposes. Instead of working to reduce these blind spots, oil firms tends instead to take advantage of them and develop an expert discourse that discourages operators from questioning the full implications of their work, and from taking note of its harmful consequences on global climate change. This article suggests that a genuine ecologization of work can only be achieved through a critical and contextualised analysis of work activities, in which workers must necessarily participate - and which often tends to be impeded by the companies themselves.
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