LAUSR

Abstract This paper shows how the development of oil in Niger and Uganda was coupled with standardization and dis/entanglement practices. In Niger, actors contested the lack of standards in the Chinese oil industry but capitalized on the opportunities that linkages to the industry had produced. In Uganda, by contrast, local entrepreneurs objected to the insistence of Western multinational oil companies on international standards, characterizing it as a barrier to the creation of linkages to the oil industry. To conceptualize these radically different outcomes of capitalist expansion, we identify specific socio-political, legal and corporate configurations that shape the way the oil industry operates in particular contexts. Understanding capitalism as assemblages, we acknowledge its heterogeneity, inconsistency and indeterminacy without losing sight of its ‘bigness’.