Hannah Appel’s The Licit Life of Capitalism examines the project of capitalism in relation to oil extraction in Equatorial Guinea. It is also much more than this. It explores the ‘ongoing entanglement with the raced and gendered histories of colonialism, empire, and white supremacy out of which capitalism and liberalism emerged’ (p. 2, emphasis in the original). The links between these subjugating processes and the avowed freedoms of liberalism are brought together around the concept of the ‘licit’. While one definition of licit is ‘lawful’, it also can mean ‘permitted’ or ‘allowable’. As Appel acknowledges, US oil companies use the ambiguity around what is licit to claim that they are working within liberalist traditions of transparency and equity, while at the same time relying on non-transparency and raced and gendered inequalities to increase profits.

Appel demonstrates these operations through attention to six ‘objects’ or ‘processes’ – the Offshore, the Enclave, the Contract, the Subcontract, the Economy and the Political – which also are the titles of the book’s six chapters. She emphasizes that her book is not simply an account of a local inflection of capital. The processes/objects she examines are not only inherent to oil capitalism in Equatorial Guinea but are also part of the project of capitalism itself. By ‘project’ she means that capitalism is contested and uneven, as many ethnographies have shown, but also powerful and systemic. According to Appel, the apparent smoothness by which capital functions is the result of work by the various actors involved, operating through these six processes/objects.

The Licit Life of Capitalism is incredibly informative. Knowing little of Equatorial Guinea prior to reading the book, I was astounded to learn that it is the wealthiest nation in Africa per capita, has the world’s longest serving non-royal head of state, who has been in power since 1979, and received independence from Spain only in 1968. The finely detailed ethnographic particulars in each chapter do an excellent job of illustrating contemporary life in Equatorial Guinea. The other major move that the book makes is to question the utility of the ‘resource curse’ literature. According to the resource curse argument, many resource-rich nations are unable to convert that wealth into benefits for their people. As it plays out in analyses of African countries, governments are thus blamed for being corrupt. The problem with this line of thinking, as Appel argues, is that it says more about what African countries are not, rather than what they are.

Chapters 1 and 2, ‘The offshore’ and ‘The enclave’, highlight the partitioning work that capitalism does on a global scale. To make itself licit, capital must disentangle itself from the particularities of the country in which it operates. Or, as some of the managers noted, no one wants to be Shell in Nigeria. Chapter 1 shows how offshore oil production shares some of the same characteristics of offshore finance – hidden operations not subject to a nation state’s laws and taxes. In this chapter, Appel details her visit to one of the floating rigs involved in oil extraction. On it, she finds forms of racialized hierarchy built into the very production processes, where ‘Third World’ nationals toil in dangerous conditions for white US or UK managers. But the term ‘offshore’ also extends to the very forms of the corporation. Subsidiary companies are set up to operate on a national scale, while human resources, legal and other corporate entities are scattered around the globe. All of this reduces risk for the parent company and is one of the licit forms that capital takes. Chapter 2 richly describes the company enclaves where white supremacist norms of race and gender play out daily. Appel depicts the differentiated forms of housing in the enclaves, which range from estate mansions for management down to barracks for third country nationals. Moreover, only management can bring their wives – it is nearly all men who work for the companies.

Chapters 3 and 4, ‘The contract’ and ‘The subcontract’, show how contracts and subcontractors are also at the heart of reducing risk to capital. The important consideration is that countries willingly enter into production-sharing contracts and other contractual agreements as part of resource extraction. And capitalism’s dependence on subcontracting allows companies to evade liability and responsibility for any ‘problems’ (such as spills, medical claims or workers’ retirement) that would cut into profits. While the first four chapters explain the development of oil as capitalism, Chapters 5 and 6, ‘The economy’ and ‘The political’, detail the effects of oil on the political economy of Equatorial Guinea.

My main critique of the book is that the style of writing does not welcome non-specialist readers into the important conversations that Appel is undertaking. As such, I would recommend it only for graduate-level courses in anthropology, geography, and development and environmental studies.