Offshore Attachments Oil and Intimacy in the Caribbean

Reviews

"Chelsea Schields has written a fascinating account that documents how international oil companies manipulated sexual desire and race relations to control a transnational labor force in the Dutch Antilles. She convincingly argues that sex and race are central to understanding the organization of labor in the oil industry. The work also addresses the demise of the oil industry, immigration to the metropole, the racist tropes Afro-Caribbean people faced, and efforts by radical activists who imagined a different social reality."—Miguel Tinker Salas, author of The Enduring Legacy: Oil, Culture, and Society in Venezuela

"Offshore Attachments is deeply original, bringing together a wide range of sources and analytical perspectives to unearth the critical role of the Caribbean in the development of the global energy system and the importance of women’s sexual and reproductive labor to the oil economy. This is a fantastic work of scholarship that will undoubtedly make an impact in multiple fields."⏤Nicole Bourbonnais, author of Birth Control in the Decolonizing Caribbean: Reproductive Politics and Practice on Four Islands, 1930–1970

"The very premise of the book—the linkage between oil and sex, the latter broadly conceived—is novel, innovative, engaging, and even transgressive at times, since Schields reads with and against the grain of existing studies. Her prose incorporates a diverse body of sources in a cohesive narrative structure that moves forward and backward in time and across space with both clarity and grace."—Jennifer L. Foray, author of Visions of Empire in the Nazi-Occupied Netherlands