Contested geographies of Kurdistan. Oil and Kurdish self-determination in Iraq

Since the collapse of the Ba’athist regime in 2003, the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI) has cast itself as a new energy frontier in order to support a historically contested self-determination. Resource nationalism is central in the Kurdish quest for international recognition, but the rise of a de facto petro-state has fuelled conflicts over identity and territory, inside and beyond the region. Based on ethnographic fieldwork across the KRI, the thesis explores the remodelling of old enmities upon the rampant development of a rentier, patrimonial, and violent oil economy.