Petrocultural Formations: Crisis Discourse, Energy Geographies, and Neo-liberalism

The 1970s energy crises was a decisive point in US culture and in the development of neo-liberal geographies. After the post-war period of rapid economic growth, Western economies sputtered and stalled. Cutting across political, economic, and cultural spheres, the discourse of energy crisis brought narrative coherence to what was, in fact, a heterogenous historical moment. In doing so, energy crisis discourse facilitated dramatic social and economic restructuring, as well as shifts in the distributions of lived spaces and times. More broadly, energy crisis discourse played a significant role in configuring the emerging processes of neo-liberalization and bringing about a set of historical outcomes, herein elucidated in three figures: the suburb, energy, and the entrepreneur.