Abstract
For the best part of a century oil has been the material basis of western economic life. Given its huge economic importance, oil is inescapably part of politics. Yet from its onset the subject of political economy has been curiously lacking in perspectives that engage seriously with energy as an economic and political predicament. Today with a few striking exceptions oil has had a very limited place in macro-analysis of the pathologies at work in the present political economy of the West. This absence makes little empirical sense once we take a look at the visible economic and political world we have inhabited since the turn of the century. This book aspires to tell the story of the western economic crisis that has developed since then through the lens of oil and in doing so connect the present set of economic and political predicaments facing western countries to the older crises of the 1970s.
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Thompson, H. (2017). Introduction. In: Oil and the Western Economic Crisis. Building a Sustainable Political Economy: SPERI Research & Policy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52509-9_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52509-9_1
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