Disobedient Things: The Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Accounting for Disaster

David Troy Cochrane

EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, 2020, vol. 7, issue 1, 3-32

Abstract: Analysis of the Deepwater Horizon disaster and the accumulative decline of BP demonstrate both the analytical efficacy of the capital-as-power approach to value theory, and the irreducible role of objects in the process of accumulation. Rather than productivity per se, accumulation depends on (1) control of productivity, and (2) the evaluation of control. Capital-as-power focuses on capitalization as an expression of the evaluation by owners of their own power. In this article, I argue that the power of owners translated into capital values is power over both the human and non-human components of systems of production. Power is actualized through entities defined as cultural and political, as well as economic. Capitalization translates into the commensurable financial units of capital the irreducible social order—including objects—that bears on accumulation. The decline of BP’s capital valuation in the wake of the disaster expressed the market’s falling confidence in the expertise, experience and equipment that comprised the company’s productive capacity.

Keywords: capital accumulation; crisis; things; value (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G G01 P16 P28 Q4 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/215398/2/2 ... sobedient_things.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:espost:215398

DOI: 10.3384/VS.2001-5992.2020.7.1.3

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters from ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().