LAS CUATRO BASES DE LAS MASCULINDADES ÉTICAS

As a critical approach is taken vis-à-vis the research, analysis is a process that continues throughout the PhD process. The overarching approach to data analysis in this thesis uses three analytical processes: (i) data reduction;

(ii) data display, and; (iii) conclusion drawing and verification (Miles &

Huberman, 1994:10-12).

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I reduced data from the beginning of this process by choosing a research topic, refining the topic, deciding who to interview, which questions to ask at interview, how to code the data, what to display, what to write and how to organise all of the material. I also used different formats to display the data such as lists, graphs and charts to provide different overviews of the data and reveal patterns between interviewee responses. Conclusion drawing occurred in a basic form rather early on in the research process as I started to assemble useful literature and to sift through it, deciding what to discard and what to read. Later on in the process, I drew and discarded conclusions to explain the data as I examined patterns in the literature, the interview data and from personal observations, in order to identify potential structures and mechanisms that were either verified or rejected as the research progressed.

These processes of data reduction, data display and conclusion drawing as outlined above are used for both qualitative and quantitative data collected throughout the research process and alongside data collection form a continuous iterative process (Robson, 2005:476).

Throughout the process, I took notes as I read relevant articles and books that helped to identify that which I still needed to understand. In analysing such qualitative data, I aimed to incorporate discourse into theorising without reducing real social life to discourse (Fairclough, 2010b). During the data collection phase in the field, I took notes of what data was already collected and noted where further clarification was still needed to help to avoid “death by data asphyxiation” (Pettigrew in Huberman & Miles, 2002:17) and to better deal with the quantity of data. Having collected sufficient data, I started to devise coding categories for the qualitative data in interview transcripts in order to manage the information collected. I began by analysing the interview transcripts manually, applying first stage descriptive coding to the transcripts based upon the themes and ideas that emerged. These were then entered into the computer software NVivo 8, which has been used to help facilitate further coding and analysis of quantitative data into categories that tackle the research question. In terms of the quantitative data, I initially stored it in a large table, from which numerical responses were compared. In helping to identify patterns in the quantitative data, the statistical software

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package SPSS 17 was used. This enabled the comparison and display of data in a manageable way. These tools proved useful in keeping track of the research and in terms of understanding the data for theory construction.

As I conducted all of the interviews personally, the data analysis process started in the field in the interviews. Inevitably, post-interview, interviewees are unable to speak for themselves in the final thesis, but can, as objects of the research, only speak through my interpretation of them even if their words are not reducible to what I convey.⁷ Nevertheless, I have tried to contextualise any quotations used. In selecting interview quotes, equally, I assessed them in context, critically examining them against data collected from other social actors with similar and different agendas and looked for common patterns between the different pieces of interview data. Thus, I selected quotations based upon their representativeness and consistency with regards to statements from other interviewees and/or scholars.

As Price (2007:107) notes, the idea of the transitivity of truth is useful in analysing social data such as interview transcripts, as whilst there may be different ways to interpret a text (transitivity), some interpretations are better than others (intransitivity). In terms of assessing the quality of data collected, i.e. the validity and reliability, I checked the data's representativeness by triangulating the quantitative and qualitative data (Robson, 2005). What is necessary in the process of triangulation is to compare and contrast different sources of findings that address the same phenomenon. The closed questions in the data set collected at interview lend themselves well to this process as different actors answered the same set of questions with statistical responses that can be compared and contrasted. To this end, I looked at the answers of different categories of respondents independently and together in identifying patterns. Thus, the view of reality is more reliable and the conclusions showing what is happening in reality are more accurate.

7 See Sayer (2000:17) for a discussion of this problematic.

38 Chapter 2

The oil curse as the outcome of presence and absence: rentier states, civil violence and societal challenges for MNOCs

This chapter presents and critiques the academic literature relating to the oil curse in oil-abundant, developing countries such as Venezuela and Colombia. I take from this literature that the paradox of plenty is essentially a paradox of the presence of significant oil revenues and the absence of oil-led development that benefits the citizens of oil-rich countries. These same dynamics are present in the literature that focuses upon the antonym of plenty, i.e. oil scarcity. This literature centres upon the consequences of certain oil importers’ scramble for available oil, whereby consumer countries prioritise the benefits of oil-led development in their own countries over the effects of the oil curse in oil-exporting countries. To this end, the underlying energy security discourse, framed by neoliberalism, illustrates both a disregard for oil producers’ interests and the current unsustainability of the global powers' material transactions with nature. I argue that it is a fallacy to examine abundance without acknowledging scarcity, as these phenomena are coexistent and causally related, even if they are irreducible to each other. Indeed, the relationships of dependency and interdependency cannot be understood by focusing upon the oil abundance literature, given its lack of attention to capitalist superstructures and interests, which are somewhat fuelled by oil. Unfortunately, such absences directly influence the chain of causality within the oil curse literature and lead certain authors to propose inappropriate solutions to address the problems. Thus, this chapter uses the logic of Dialectical Critical Realism (DCR) to provide a framework that moves from the initial stages of scarcity/abundance or absence/presence and difference to discuss structural emergence, constraint, power relations and agential action in analysing the oil curse. It also draws from the philosophy of meta-Reality that the world should be understood in terms of the primacy of the non-dual

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(peace) over the dual (conflict) state in understanding conflict within oil abundant countries.⁸

Whilst this thesis focuses upon MNOCs’ agency, this chapter does not (although I note that their agency is generally under-examined within the greed/grievance literature), but rather it seeks to contextualise MNOCs’

actions within oil-rich countries and the wider global framework. It highlights the ethical tension that exists between MNOCs' need to be physically present where oil reserves are located and the challenges of operating amidst varying levels of structural and physical violence in order to gain access to oil reserves. Whilst MNOCs only control 10% of the world’s conventional oil resources and 25% of its total production, they still attract significant international attention as, amongst others, they have increasingly had to focus on projects that NOCs cannot undertake without them. These are often high-risk exploration and production (E&P) ventures that require significant capital outlays, advanced technological capacities, and project management capabilities that NOCs do not always possess.

These projects are often located in environmentally challenging, sparsely populated areas, and/or where indigenous, tribal and minority groups reside. This can lead to a disconnection between governemental plans and the aspirations of local communities, whose potential claims on the land are often side-lined by national governments (Wasserstrom & Reider, 2013:77).

This trend is also relevant more generally to the mining and other extractive industries in Latin America.

MNOCs have, thus, caused, sustained and perpetuated negative structures and adverse causal mechanisms (discussed below), which has led certain authors to denounce MNOCs' CSR as hypocritical. Moreover, in this context, CSR is in part viewed as a way for companies to compensate communities for certain oil curse effects. These discussions, which have explanatory power in both Colombia and Venezuela, are more thoroughly dealt with in the subsequent chapters.

8 Peace can exist without war, but war cannot exist without elements of peace. Thus, the non-dual precedes the dual state (See: Bhaskar, 2002).

40 The chapter is divided into two main sections:

The first section discusses scholars’ claims that oil states, when compared to similar non-oil countries, are more susceptible to negative trends such as slow economic growth, inflation, low saving levels, a poor investment climate, increased unemployment, weak property rights, unstable export earnings, poor human development levels, poverty, corruption, institutional inertia, poor public bureaucracy and increased conflict dynamics (Torvik, 2009:243; Rosser, 2006; Sala-i-Martin & Subramanian, 2003; Kolstad &

Wiig, 2009:5321; Fearon & Laitin, 2003; Fearon, 2005:491; Pendergast et al., 2008; Le Billon, 2003:413; Petermann et al., 2007; Karl, 1997). Thus, this section examines the reasons why these phenomena may be caused by oil access and revenues, showing that the entrenched patterns and constellationalities⁹ of spacio-temporal dependencies, power structures and agencies are not restricted to national boundaries.

The second section discusses solutions that have been suggested or attempted in praxis to decouple oil from the resource curse. Gaspar (2011) notes that international law accepts that a country’s resources should be exploited to benefit its people. However, as is shown below, abstract universalities¹⁰ often prevail within and outside of these countries impeding transformative praxis.