“Wagering Life” in the Petro-City: Embodied Ecologies of Oil Flow, Capitalism, and Justice in Esmeraldas, Ecuador

This article uses a political ecology approach to examine how urban residents of the refinery city of Esmeraldas “wager life” under conditions of social and chemical toxicity associated with oil capitalism. The article draws on the scholarship on affective economies and critical oil geographies to trace the knotting of social reproduction and oil capital in Esmeraldas and to illustrate how “cruel optimisms” (Berlant 2011) allow city-dwellers to make sense of everyday life amidst frontier-style petro-capitalism. Focusing on personal narratives of social reproduction, affect, and hope in the city, the article first argues that “justice” can be contradictory and politically ambivalent and, second, challenges fixed readings of resistance, refusal, or submission in resource extraction–dominated sites. Rather than presupposing resistance to petro-capitalism or submission to its workings, the article illustrates the liveliness of urban justice struggles and how attention to embodied ecologies and affective oil economies deepens scholarship on social justice. Key Words: cruel optimisms, environmental justice, petro-capital, social reproduction, urban political ecology.