M Cepek’s Life in Oil is a profoundly nuanced and empathetic ethnography of Cofán people in the Ecuadorian Amazon living for decades in the shadow of oil extraction. Across eight highly readable and well-paced chapters that are interspersed with photographs, Cepek tackles an issue just as likely to be addressed outside as inside the academy. Far from an unknown people or region or hidden issue, the impact of oil on the lives of indigenous people in the Ecuadorian Amazon has been extensively covered by both journalists and scholars. The typical portrait painted in the popular media is one of an economically and culturally impoverished, devastated, and seemingly irredeemable people. Cepek uses a scholarly-yet-accessible approach to mediate the popular imaginary of the Cofán to build a more complex (and by far, more troubling) portrayal of the relationship between indigenous people and oil. Cepek gets behind this narrative to craft a much more nuanced and empathetic account of the effects of oil––in multiple senses––on Cofán lives and livelihoods. Cepek uses the classic tools and techniques of ethnography to break through these stereotypes. By residing in situ, speaking the indigenous language (A’ingae), and trying to understand oil, its impact, and implications of its extraction from the Cofán point of view, Cepek produces one of the more realistic accounts of the effects of oil on everyday life in a community on the frontlines of oil extraction. By the second chapter, Cepek introduces us to Dureno, the main setting of the ethnography. Dureno is the most populous of the 13 Cofán communities in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Cepek has spent much time there since 2002, and during the most intensive period of his fieldwork, he lived with a host family and deeply immersed himself in the activities of the community––though some of these, including bathing in an oil-contaminated river,

中文翻译：

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石油中的生活：科凡在亚马逊油田中的生存，迈克尔·塞佩克 (Michael Cepek)

M Cepek's Life in Oil 是厄瓜多尔亚马逊地区的 Cofán 人在石油开采的阴影下生活了数十年的深刻细致和善解人意的民族志。在穿插有照片的八个高度可读且节奏合理的章节中，Cepek 解决了一个与学院内部一样可能在外部解决的问题。石油对厄瓜多尔亚马逊原住民生活的影响远非未知的人或地区或隐藏的问题，已被记者和学者广泛报道。大众媒体所描绘的典型肖像是一个经济和文化贫困、饱受摧残、看似不可救药的人。Cepek 使用一种学术性但易于理解的方法来调解 Cofán 的流行想象，以构建一个更复杂的（到目前为止，更令人不安）描绘了土著人民与石油之间的关系。Cepek 支持这种叙述，以更加细致入微和感同身受地描述石油——在多种意义上——对 Cofán 生活和生计的影响。Cepek 使用经典的民族志工具和技术来打破这些刻板印象。通过居住在原地，说土著语言（A'ingae），并试图从 Cofán 的角度理解石油、它的影响和它的提取的含义，Cepek 对石油对石油的影响做出了更现实的描述之一。石油开采前线社区的日常生活。在第二章，Cepek 向我们介绍了 Dureno，民族志的主要背景。Dureno 是厄瓜多尔亚马逊地区 13 个 Cofán 社区中人口最多的社区。