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Technopolitics of a concessionary contract : how international law was transformed by its encounter with Anglo-Iranian oil
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Shafiee, Katayoun (2018) Technopolitics of a concessionary contract : how international law was transformed by its encounter with Anglo-Iranian oil. International Journal of Middle East Studies, 50 (4). pp. 627-648. doi:10.1017/S0020743818000909
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Official URL: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0020743818000909
Abstract
This article examines the transformative work of Anglo-Iranian oil in international law helping to constitute a peculiar distinct ion between civilized/uncivilized and developed/developing. The Middle East was a central site for political intervention through international law and the new Bretton Woods Institutions of the mid - 20th century that sought to redefine the powers of former colonies as new states in the process of decolonization. Historical scholarship has not addressed the infrastructure of this socio-legal relationship as a political project. Political histories of Iran in the Mosaddegh period discuss the legal aspects of the oil nationalization crisis in terms of their impact on the 1953 coup d’état and domestic political events in Tehran. Histories of nation-states and sovereignty ignore the procedural work of laws and contracts concerning natural resources in constructing the newly emergent post-colonial states. Many studies exist of how petroleum laws and contracts impacted Iran’s oil industry, for example, but not in the other direction to think about the transformative work of oil in law. International legal studies refer to the Anglo-Iranian oil dispute in discussing the need for an expanded scope of laws to deal with economic development contracts because after World War II, international law was unfit to deal with the emergence of newly sovereign post-colonial states. These new states were the sole recipients of this type of economic development contract, known as a concession in the colonial period. The eventual legitimization of “raw material sovereignty ” in the 1960s marked a remarkable transfer of legal power that challenge d the international political and economic order. The origins of international relations between the so-called Global North and South, or the Third World, were constructed, in part, out of the need to maintain these contractual agreements between multinational corporations and new states with natural resources such as oil.
| Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||
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| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions K Law [Moys] > KT Asia and Pacific |
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| Divisions: | Faculty of Arts > History | ||||||
| Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH): | Íran -- Political aspects , Íran -- History -- 20th century, Petroleum -- Íran, International law, Natural resources - Íran | ||||||
| Journal or Publication Title: | International Journal of Middle East Studies | ||||||
| Publisher: | Cambridge University Press | ||||||
| ISSN: | 1471-6380 | ||||||
| Official Date: | 28 November 2018 | ||||||
| Dates: |
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| Date of first compliant deposit: | 24 October 2017 | ||||||
| Volume: | 50 | ||||||
| Number: | 4 | ||||||
| Page Range: | pp. 627-648 | ||||||
| DOI: | 10.1017/S0020743818000909 | ||||||
| Status: | Peer Reviewed | ||||||
| Publication Status: | Published | ||||||
| Access rights to Published version: | Restricted or Subscription Access | ||||||
| Copyright Holders: | Cambridge University Press |
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