Seeing like an oil company’s CHM programme

Abstract

James Ferguson’s 2005 article ‘Seeing Like an Oil Company’ powerfully described the development of resource-extraction enclaves in African states, and the complex landscape of globally integrated and excluded territories that such enclaves produce. In this article I discuss the experience of doing cultural heritage management within one such enclave: the patchwork of protected camps, rights-of-way and air-conditioned Land-Cruisers associated with the Chad Export Project and oil production in southwestern Chad, one of the poorest countries on Earth. I will particularly examine the relationships between such ‘CHM enclaves’ and the development of national archaeological capabilities in African countries.