Skip to main content

Research Repository

Advanced Search

All Outputs (9)

Gaseous politics: contradictions and moral frontiers of the energy transition in Ghana (2024)
Journal Article
Destrée, P. (2024). Gaseous politics: contradictions and moral frontiers of the energy transition in Ghana. Critique of Anthropology, 44(3), 235-255. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308275x241269579

In Ghana, new oil and gas discoveries at a time of global decarbonization and energy transition have put into question the viability of the country’s hydrocarbon reserves and their promises of prosperity and development. As the country anticipates st... Read More about Gaseous politics: contradictions and moral frontiers of the energy transition in Ghana.

‘We work for the Devil’: oil extraction, kinship and the fantasy of time on the offshore frontier (2023)
Journal Article
Destrée, P. (2023). ‘We work for the Devil’: oil extraction, kinship and the fantasy of time on the offshore frontier. Critique of Anthropology, 43(1), 24-43. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308275x231156713

In the offshore oil industry of Takoradi, Ghana, white expatriate workers describe oil extraction as both ‘the work of the Devil’ and a ‘labour of love’. While companies strive to produce the offshore as a timeless and spaceless fantasy of ‘frictionl... Read More about ‘We work for the Devil’: oil extraction, kinship and the fantasy of time on the offshore frontier.

Loloum, Tristan, Simone Abram, and Nathalie Ortar (eds.): Ethnographies of Power. A Political Anthropology of Energy. New York: Berghahn Books, 2021. 202 pp. ISBN 978-1-78920-979-2. (EASA, 42) Price: $ 120.00 (2022)
Journal Article
Destrée, P. (2022). Loloum, Tristan, Simone Abram, and Nathalie Ortar (eds.): Ethnographies of Power. A Political Anthropology of Energy. New York: Berghahn Books, 2021. 202 pp. ISBN 978-1-78920-979-2. (EASA, 42) Price: $ 120.00. Anthropos, 117(2), 563-565. https://doi.org/10.5771/0257-9774-2022-2-563

Contentious connections: infrastructure, dignity, and collective life in Accra, Ghana (2021)
Journal Article
Destrée, P. (2022). Contentious connections: infrastructure, dignity, and collective life in Accra, Ghana. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 28(1), 92-113. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9655.13654

Infrastructural systems have emerged as productive ethnographic sites for analysing political subjectivities and rationalities. Through the case of shared electricity and prepaid meters in the compound housing system of Accra, Ghana, I suggest that i... Read More about Contentious connections: infrastructure, dignity, and collective life in Accra, Ghana.

The struggle for capacity: a historical ethnography of toxicology in Senegal (2021)
Journal Article
Destrée, P. (2021). The struggle for capacity: a historical ethnography of toxicology in Senegal. Anthropology Book Forum, 7(1),

Book Review, Tousignant, Noémi. 2018. Edges of Exposure: Toxicology and the problem of capacity in postcolonial Senegal. Durham, London: Duke University Press.