Resources for Reform explores how people's lives intersect with the global oil industry through a close look at Argentina's experiment with privatizing its national oil company in the name of neoliberal reform.

While most people live far from the sites of oil production, oil politics involves us all. Resources for Reform explores how people's lives intersect with the increasingly globalized and concentrated oil industry through a close look at Argentina's experiment with privatizing its national oil company in the name of neoliberal reform.

Examining Argentina's conversion from a state-controlled to a private oil market, Elana Shever reveals interconnections between large-scale transformations in society and small-scale shifts in everyday practice, intimate relationships, and identity. This engaging ethnography offers a window into the experiences of middle-class oil workers and their families, impoverished residents of shanty settlements bordering refineries, and affluent employees of transnational corporations as they struggle with rapid changes in the global economy, their country, and their lives. It reverberates far beyond the Argentine oil fields and offers a fresh approach to the critical study of neoliberalism, kinship, citizenship, and corporations.

"Resources for Reform delivers an intrinsically interesting story about oil and neoliberalism in a country where some of the loudest responses to neoliberalism have been heard. Shever takes a critical look at the oil industry and the practices of oil companies like Shell-providing a clear, compelling exploration of the multiple sides of neoliberalism in Argentina. A major contribution."