A Well Ordered Reality: Aspects of the Development of Schlumberger, 1920-39

Abstract

This paper takes a case study in the history of geophysics as an opportunity to develop a network analysis that unifies the description of the political economy of the oil industry and the content of the science produced to service that industry. The case study chosen is the history of electrical methods of prospecting for oil, as developed notably by Conrad and Marcel Schlumberger. The analysis is centred on a consideration of property relations in the oil industry — how these property relations involve severe constraints on the configurations of (social) space, time and energy within the oil networks, and how these configurations become translated into the content of the geophysical methods produced by geophysicists.