Culture as Renewable Oil: How Territory, Bureaucratic Power and Culture Coalesce in the Venezuelan Petrostate

This book examines the Venezuelan petro-state from a cultural perspective. It unpacks the complex mediations that take place between a resource-intensive political regime and the work of culture and cultural producers in relation to policy and discourse. It demonstrates how oil is a cultural resource, in addition to a natural resource, implying

Penélope Plaza Azuaje is a Venezuelan architect, researcher and urban artivist. She researches the entanglements between oil, politics, culture and urban space, with a particular interest in urban artivism, and contemporary Venezuelan petro-politics. She holds a PhD in Cultural Policy and Management from City University of London and an MPhil in Latin American Studies from the University of Cambridge. Currently she is a Lecturer in Architecture at the School of Architecture, University of Reading.