Tracing Gender, Family, and Work in the Alberta Petro-Economy

MediaTropes Vol VII, No 2 (2020): 40–66 doi: 10.33137/mt.v7i2.33669 ISSN 1913-6005

“STANDING UP FOR CANADIAN OIL & GAS FAMILIES”: TRACING GENDER, FAMILY, AND WORK IN THE ALBERTA PETRO-ECONOMY

ALICIA MASSIE AND EMMA JACKSON

Introduction As a part of one of the most controversial industries of the modern century, oil and gas corporations have developed sophisticated communication strategies and campaigns to humanize, defend, and promote extractive activity by touting job growth, environmental stewardship, and ties to the national economy.1 Recently, scholars such as Dorow (2015), Rich (2016), and Matz and Renfrew (2015), have pointed to the turn towards mobilizing discourses of community and place to frame industry activity through ideals of local culture and identity. Indeed, these discourses have permeated municipal promotional campaigns in sites like the Regional Municipality of Wood Buffalo (RMWB)—the municipality governing Fort McMurray, the urban centre of the oil sands—with messages of the city as “a family-friendly place, a good place to raise kids, a place of multiple opportunities for leisure and community, and thus a place to which people might want to move.”2 Moreover, as Rich (2016) demonstrates, there is also a growing attempt to deploy a romanticized ideal of the region’s

1 Eban S. Goodstein, The Trade-off Myth: Fact And Fiction About Jobs And The Environment (Washington, DC: Island Press/Shearwater Books, 1999); Peter K. Bsumek, Jen Schneider, Steve Schwarze, and Jennifer Peeples, “Corporate Ventriloquism: Corporate Advocacy, the Coal Industry, and the Appropriation of Voice,” in Voice and Environmental Communication, eds. Jennifer Peeples and Stephen Depoe (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014): 21– 43; Alon Lischinsky, “What Is the Environment Doing in My Report? Analyzing the Environment-as-Stakeholder Thesis through Corpus Linguistics,” Environmental Communication 9, no. 4 (October 2, 2015): 539–59. 2 Sara Dorow, “Gendering Energy Extraction in Fort McMurray,” in Alberta Oil and the Decline of Democracy in Canada, eds. Meenal Shrivastava and Lorna Stefanick (Edmonton, AB: Athabasca University Press, 2015), 276.

www.mediatropes.com MediaTropes Vol VII, No 2 (2020) Alicia Massie and Emma Jackson / 41

labour identities, resulting in what she describes as a narrative “binding people and place to extraction.”3 In essence, ‘community’ has become a site of contestation—a contest that the extractive industry has proven very adept at influencing through media representations and subsidized publics. For some time, the oilsands—and by extension, Fort McMurray—have become sites of intense interest for scholarship. Oil and its related industries have risen to such immense power in the current global economy, that our societies can now be understood as “petrocultures.”4 All aspects of our lives— material, discursive, and cultural—are now organized around, and permeated by the production and consumption of oil; however, critical research on oil and energy remains most often rooted in masculinized modes and areas of inquiry.5 As the editors of this special issue point out, to fully understand oil from a social and cultural vantage-point, to understand how oil is mediating and transforming our world, we need to ask how broader perspectives—such as feminist, indigenous, cultural, and others—alter our understanding of extraction and all that is contained within and around it. This paper is an exploration of Alberta’s petro-economy, with a focus on how oil is represented within media. We investigate the ways in which discourses of oil both shape and are shaped by new communication methods. Following in the footsteps of our political economist and feminist colleagues, we employ a socialist feminist epistemology and framework— exploring representations of gender, family, and work as they are tied to the oilsands and Fort McMurray. This research examines discursive and material contradictions within media discourses,6 unpacking how the Alberta petro-economy is represented through familial discourses that often contradict local experiences, identities, and histories in order to promote an idealized version of the petro- economy. We argue that to begin to problematize a masculinized understanding of the oilsands, we must attend to the ways in which community and family are deeply rooted social structures of production and reproduction relied upon to (ostensibly) provide the labour force stability required for Alberta’s petro-

3 Jessica L. Rich, “Drilling Is Just the Beginning: Romanticizing Rust Belt Identities in the Campaign for Shale Gas,” Environmental Communication 10, no. 3 (2016), 292. 4 Stephanie LeMenager, Living Oil: Petroleum Culture in the American Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 5 M. E. Luka and Sheena Wilson, A Politics of Readings-and-Recording: Feminist and Indigenous Perspectives on Energy Cultures, Energy Transition, and Social Transformation in the Anthropocene (Manuscript in preparation). 6 Sara O’Shaughnessy and Naomi T. Krogman, “Gender as Contradiction: From Dichotomies to Diversity in Natural Resource Extraction,” Journal of Rural Studies 27 (2011): 134–43.

www.mediatropes.com MediaTropes Vol VII, No 2 (2020) Alicia Massie and Emma Jackson / 42

capitalism.7 We illustrate how media representations of the oilsands and Fort McMurray rely on, and reveal, contradictory material and discursive contradictions of family and work—relying on traditional gender roles, conflating industry with family, and presenting oil as a fundamental aspect of everyday life. We begin by providing a brief review of work that has discussed the relationship between women, gender, and resource communities, focusing on two core elements: the notion of “frontier masculinity” and ideologies of “familism.” We then sketch out the theoretical and methodological framework for this paper, reviewing O’Shaughnessy and Krogman’s (2011) Gender as Contradiction framework. Our findings blend together several levels of analysis, discussing first the shift in corporate public relations towards social media and “subsidized publics.”8 We then outline and discuss discourses that emerge from within four pro-oil Facebook groups: Canada’s Energy Citizens, Oil Respect, Oil Sands Action, and Oil Sands Strong. Building on existing feminist analyses of contemporary petrocultures, such as those provided by Rich (2016) and Dorow (2015), we maintain that the discourses analyzed here shape a particular imaginary underpinned by a working-class sensibility and an ideology of familism (a hyper-emphasis on the social centrality of family). We conclude this paper with a discussion of what these discourses accomplish— whose interests they serve and what realities they hide. As an emphasis on material and discursive contradictions will show, Fort McMurray is a resource community layered with cultural constructions of gender, family, and work that must be considered to offer a critical and complete picture of life and labour in Alberta’s extractive economy.

Feminist Approaches to Studying Resource Communities The majority of the academic literature that exists on resource communities and extractivism has not adopted a feminist lens. However, as the work of Dorow (2015), O’Shaughnessy (2011), Wilson (2014), Miller (2004), and others demonstrates, there is much to be gained by examining the gendered dimensions of resource communities and extractivism. While these analyses are becoming more prominent, they still remain at the periphery of energy

7 Sara Dorow, “Gendering,” 276; Gabriela Valdivia, “Petro-capitalism,” in Green Politics: An A-to-Z Guide, eds. Dustin Mulvaney and Pail Robbins (London: SAGE, 2010). 8 Shane Gunster, et al., “Fossil Nation: Extractivist Public Relations on Social Media,” in Regime of Obstruction: How Corporate Power Blocks Energy Democracy, ed. William Carroll (Edmonton, AB: Athabasca University Press, in press).

www.mediatropes.com MediaTropes Vol VII, No 2 (2020) Alicia Massie and Emma Jackson / 43

humanities literature. As such, it is important to provide a brief overview of the ways in which this scholarship has progressed over the past decades. This overview also shows the scarcity of feminist or otherwise gender-oriented research that has investigated oil and media. Both the concepts of frontier masculinity and familial ideology highlight the importance of the legacy of feminist scholarship on resource communities. Feminist inquiry has helped to elucidate not only historical social relations of extractivism, but also local particularities of Alberta’s modern petroculture. Frontier Masculinity Rapid resource development across the Western half of North America—and certainly within the borders of the Athabasca basin—has been ideologically supported by dominant discourses of frontier masculinity and neoliberalism.9 As Miller notes, the present day culture of Alberta’s oil industry is deeply rooted in “a consciousness derived from the powerful symbols of the frontier myth and the romanticized cowboy hero.”10 Leaving the farms and ranches of Alberta and Saskatchewan, the oilsands’ original rig workers came from working-class backgrounds, perceiving oil as their opportunity to strike it rich. For them, the frontier represented hope. It was ‘the land of opportunity’— an environment in which one could succeed with toughness, tenacity, and relentless hard work. As such, the frontier’s enduring hero—the cowboy—was self-interested, competitive, powerful, and tough. He was the embodiment of rugged masculinity. Today, such qualities remain anchored in the social relations and discursive practices of remote resource communities, constructing what Connell (1995) first described as “hegemonic masculinities.” As O’Shaughnessy writes: Hegemonic masculinities are not simply qualities of male identities; they discursively construct social and economic relations and provide the cues through which all individuals in a society understand and perform their gendered identities [...] In effect, hegemonic masculinities are forms of historically and

9 Sara O’Shaughnessy, “Women’s Gendered Experiences of Rapid Resource Development in the Canadian North: New Opportunities or Old Challenges?” (PhD dissertation, University of Alberta, 2011). 10 Gloria Miller, “Frontier Masculinity in the Oil Industry: The Experience of Women Engineers,” Gender, Work, and Organization 11 (2004), 37.

www.mediatropes.com MediaTropes Vol VII, No 2 (2020) Alicia Massie and Emma Jackson / 44

temporally specific social practices that can produce subject positions and sustain particular configurations of power.11 Hegemonic masculinities are particularly pronounced in the oil industry, resulting in resource communities being spaces that not only uphold rigid gendered divisions of labour, but also masculine values, assumptions, and everyday practices.12 Consequently, many studies on contemporary resource communities note that despite industry’s increasingly frequent deployment of ‘equal opportunity’ discourses, women continue to be marginalized from the more lucrative employment opportunities available within the primary resource sector.13 Furthermore, when women are able to access such opportunities, studies have found that their experiences in the workplace have been influenced by this dominant masculine culture. Rather than directly challenging the patriarchal undertones of the industry’s occupational culture, women have largely conformed to the frontier myth and have behaved in accordance to the value system it continues to advance.14 Scholars have pointed to neoliberalism as a transformative force, capable of dismantling these gender hierarchies, and reconfiguring gendered divisions of labour.15 As Walkerdine suggests, the ideal neoliberal subject is “completely freed from traditional ties of location, class and gender and to be completely self-produced...totally responsible for their own destiny.”16 However, these traits loudly echo the characteristics of self-sufficiency, independence, and competitiveness used to describe the cowboy hero of the frontier myth. Indeed, “neoliberalism presents facets of compatibility and contradiction with frontier masculinity and has the potential to both reinforce

11 O’Shaughnessy, 117. 12 Miller, “Frontier Masculinity,” 47–73; Robin J. Ely and Debra E. Meyerson, “An Organizational Approach to Undoing Gender: The Unlikely Case of Offshore Oil Platforms,” Research in Organizational Behavior 30 (2010): 3–34; Matthew R. Filteau, “Who Are Those Guys? Undoing the Oilfield’s Roughneck Masculinity” (PhD dissertation, Pennsylvania State University, 2012). 13 Maureen G. Reed, Taking Stands: Gender and the Sustainability of Rural Communities (Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, 2003). 14 Alice Hovorka and Colleen McLeod, “Women in a Transitioning Canadian Resource Town,” Journal of Rural and Community Development, no. 3 (2008): 78–92; Elizabeth Moen, “Women in Energy Boom Towns,” Psychology of Women Quarterly, no. 6 (1981): 99–112. 15 Paula England, “The Gender Revolution: Uneven and Stalled,” Gender & Society 24, no. 2 (2010): 149–66. 16 Valerie Walkerdine, “Reclassifying Upward Mobility: Femininity and the Neo-Liberal Subject,” Gender and Education 15, no. 3 (2003), 240.

www.mediatropes.com MediaTropes Vol VII, No 2 (2020) Alicia Massie and Emma Jackson / 45

and destabilize frontier masculinity in resource peripheries.”17 In essence, by emphasizing the individual, neoliberalism merely presents a façade of gender neutrality. Ideologies of Familism Modern resource masculinities have shifted with time but remain underpinned by their nineteenth and twentieth century counterparts. Certainly the entrepreneurial, opportunistic, and individualist qualities of frontier masculinity remain highly visible. Recent studies highlight how men (and women) in petro-communities continue to enact masculinities through their relationship to extractive work—most noticeably through their relationship to normative economic roles, primarily that of the ‘breadwinner.’18 Fort McMurray and the Alberta oilsands are frequently discussed as a place where one goes to “just make money,” or perhaps more often, to support one’s family. This is clearly illustrated by the number of mobile and fly-in-fly-out workers whose families reside elsewhere in the country.19 This gender identity and performance—one deeply intertwined with labour and family— remains a cultural touchstone in resource communities. As Dorow (2015) points out in her work, both industry and municipalities are increasingly conscious in their attempts to discursively align extraction with notions of family and community. Dorow (2015) terms this “familism,” a “hyperemphasis on the social centrality of family.”20 Extending this concept within the context of extractivism, Dorow (2015) asserts that Fort McMurray’s shade of familism is unique, terming it “boomtown familism,” as here it defends the town against negative perceptions equating Fort McMurray, oil, and money. Through mobilizing a discourse of ‘boomtown familism,’ Fort McMurray is presented as prosperous, wholesome, and communal—a “place to raise a family.”21 Of course, as feminists have noted for decades, this monolithic ideal of the nuclear family is ultimately illusory.22 Widely varying structures of gender,

17 O’Shaughnessy, 161 18 Filteau, “Who are Those Guys?” 19 Nelson Ferguson, “From Coal Pits to Tar Sands: Labour Migration Between an Atlantic Canadian Region and the Athabasca Oil Sands,” Just Labour: A Canadian Journal of Work and Society 17 (2011): 106–18. 20 Dorow, “Gendering,” 277. 21 Ibid., 276. 22 See Barrie Thorne and Marilyn Yalom, Rethinking the Family: Some Feminist Questions, 2nd ed. (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1992).

www.mediatropes.com MediaTropes Vol VII, No 2 (2020) Alicia Massie and Emma Jackson / 46

generation, race, and class result in starkly different experiences of family, parenthood, and home. A familial ideology can obscure the patriarchal roots of the nuclear family as well as this social structure’s relationship to capitalism and the division of labour. While many contemporaries argue that family and household structure is changing, it is undeniably true that women still overwhelmingly perform the majority of the domestic work of cooking, cleaning, and caring.23 This is certainly the case for Albertan women, who, even if working outside the home, are likely to still be faced with the ‘second- shift,’24 working approximately 35 hours of unpaid house work per week compared to men’s 17.25 Both the material and discursive dimensions of resource communities have evidently been shaped over time by highly gendered narratives of frontier masculinity and familism. We turn now to an analytical framework capable of illuminating the contradictions that such narratives often obscure from view.

Gender as Contradiction: A Framework Drawing and building upon decades of research investigating and problematizing the role of women in resource communities, O’Shaughnessy and Krogman centre gender as a “key axis” of inequality. They point out that while gender is certainly an implicit element of resource—read “masculine”— towns, surprisingly little is known about women’s experiences with natural resource extraction in the twenty-first century Global North. They argue that more work is needed to explore how men and women understand themselves and their communities, how they are represented in different media, and how “gendered experiences, identities, opportunities and challenges have changed over time.”26 Grounded in the feminist conception that gender has both material and discursive dimensions, O’Shaughnessy and Krogman’s (2011) framework is tripartite, identifying contradiction at different levels within lived experience of resource-based communities: material, material-discursive, and discursive. For

23 Anne Milan, Leslie A. Keown, and Covadonga Robles Urquijo, Families, Living Arrangements and Unpaid Work (Ottawa: Statistics Canada, 2011). 24 Arlie R. Hochschild, The Second Shift (New York: Viking, 1989). 25 Nicole Hill, Angele Alook, and Ian Hussey, “How Gender and Race Shape Experiences of Work in Alberta’s Oil Industry,” Parkland Institute, June 27, 2017, https://www.parklandinstitute.ca/how_gender_and_race_shape_experiences_of_work_in_albert as_oil_industry. 26 O’Shaughnessy and Krogman, “Gender,” 136.

www.mediatropes.com MediaTropes Vol VII, No 2 (2020) Alicia Massie and Emma Jackson / 47

this paper, we apply the framework to analyze material-discursive contradictions. In particular, O’Shaughnessy and Krogman point to hegemonic masculinities as loci of material-discursive contradictions in resource communities. They argue that as traditionally masculine environments, resource communities are spaces where hegemonic forms of masculinity are often greatly tied to occupational identities.27 They therefore maintain that in the context of rapid structural changes, it is critical to examine how these contradictions are both weakened and reinforced. O’Shaughnessy and Krogman (2011) put forth a valuable analytical framework capable of uncovering the many gendered contradictions that exist in resource communities. While they make no reference to feminist political economy, it is clear that these contradictions are shifting under the influence of neoliberal restructuring and subsequently changing gendered experiences and identities in resource communities. We integrate the framework with a more critical perspective on neoliberalism, as we argue it can reveal the ways in which the contradictions women and men face are both created, and heightened, in the context of free-market reform.

Engaging Community: A New Marketing Strategy In April 2015, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), released an issue of their association’s magazine, Context, entitled “The Engagement Issue” (see Figure 1). The cover features a juxtaposition of stick figures, several in blue seated in rows, with one orange male figure prominently taking up the foreground and raising one arm. The byline reads, “It’s time to stand up and be heard.” The issue’s content outlines the Association’s new “core strategy”—designed to blend traditional advertising with new communication technologies such as social media to accomplish two goals: (1) to directly engage Canadians in discourse about oil and gas, and (2) to highlight the strong nationwide support they believe exists for the industry. More specifically, the issue outlines a goal of the strategy to shift support for oil and gas from “passive” to “active.” In a simplistic infographic, the magazine highlights how CAPP and industry will motivate their supporters to attend rallies and barbeques, write letters and emails to their political representatives, and wear and display supporting merchandise. The issue goes on to elaborate why this new strategy is necessary—explaining how public discourse has been, up until now, dominated by environmental NGOs who rely,

27 See note 22.

www.mediatropes.com MediaTropes Vol VII, No 2 (2020) Alicia Massie and Emma Jackson / 48

not on facts, but on values and feelings. To counter this state-of-affairs moving forward, the industry must move towards a “humanized” and “personalized” approach to marketing, taking a “ground and grassroots philosophy to heart.”28

Figure 1: CAPP Context Magazine: The Engagement Issue One of the core initiatives to come out of this new strategy is Canada’s Energy Citizens, a website, Facebook group, and steadily growing online presence that is touted as a “movement of Canadians who support Canada’s energy.” Canada’s Energy Citizens, particularly the Facebook group, has marked a decisive turn in how extraction is marketed online, and has spawned numerous sister groups such as Oil Sands Action, Canada Action, Oil Respect, and Oil Sands Strong. The more popular groups, such as Canada’s Energy Citizens and Oil Respect, have more than 215,000 and 130,000 followers respectively (at the time of writing). While these groups are sometimes described as “astroturf”—fake grassroots—this term does not quite describe the complexity of these online communities.29 While many, certainly Canada’s Energy Citizens, are likely seeded by corporate funding, the momentum and presence largely seem to be composed of real individuals. These groups seem

28 Andrew Mah, “Outreach Fundamentals,” Context: Energy Examined 3, no. 2 (2015), 14. 29 Gunster et al.,“Fossil.”

www.mediatropes.com MediaTropes Vol VII, No 2 (2020) Alicia Massie and Emma Jackson / 49

much closer to what Edward Walker describes as “grassroots for hire” or “subsidized publics.”30 Walker (2014) argues that subsidized publics are the latest to arise from the rapid growth and industrialization of the field of public affairs. Through interfacing with new communication technologies—the internet and social media being particularly relevant for this paper—corporations, business associations, and other powerful groups can employ public relations professionals to strategically recruit and engage citizen-supporters and activists. Walker notes that the most interesting aspect of subsidized publics is that these groups largely focus on individuals who were already inclined to support industry. Subsidized publics then are not necessarily about reaching new demographics, they are designed to mobilize those already on your side. CAPP’s shift to a subsidized public-style communications strategy has had notable ramifications for discourses of oil and community.31 Given that— in the vein of Canada’s Energy Citizens—the communications emanating from subsidized publics groups are arguably not intending to reach an audience outside of those individuals who are already (at least mildly) in support of the industry, the discourses present in these groups vary in important ways from more mainstream industry communications. The following sections present a critical analysis of four subsidized public groups. We examine how the public Facebook groups Canada’s Energy Citizens, Oil Respect, Oil Sands Action, and Oil Sands Strong rely on material-discursive32 contradictions of gender, family, and work to construct an idealized version of the petro-economy. We argue that through examining these Facebook groups we are able to see the extent to which discursive constructions of the oilsands and Fort McMurray remain shaped by frontier masculinity and traditional familial ideologies. It is also clear that the discourses presented on the pages illustrate well the ‘community turn’ highlighted by Dorow and O’Shaughnessy (2013). Fossil fuel development, extraction, whiteness, and traditional gender roles are represented as foundational to community and family life in Fort McMurray. Through these discourses, citizens of Alberta and the workers and residents of

30 Edward Walker, Grassroots for Hire: Public Affairs Consultants in American Democracy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 10. 31 See note 25. 32 In adopting O’Shaughnessy and Krogman’s framework, we follow them in their interpretation and definition of ‘discursive’ and ‘discourse.’ We also remain informed by critical discourse studies and are guided by Fairclough’s (1993) dual definition of discourse. Discourse can thus be understood as both an abstract noun, representing language use conceived as social practice, as well as a count noun, representing different ways of signifying experience based on particular perspectives.

www.mediatropes.com MediaTropes Vol VII, No 2 (2020) Alicia Massie and Emma Jackson / 50

the oilsands are distanced from both the reality of precarious employer and employee relationships, the nuanced and interlocking relations of class, gender, and race that sustain the oil economy.

Providing for One’s Family: Men as Breadwinners Mentions of the oilsands and Fort McMurray can evoke contradictory images. On the one hand, the extractive hub of the petrostate: the nexus of industrial power, transnational capital, and neoliberal capitalism. On the other, the company town: a working-class community shaped by the struggles and ambitions of people striving to work and build the community on their own terms.33 Whatever the image, there often remains one element firmly fixed in view: male-dominated industry. Despite shifting patterns of labour, culture, and technology, the oilsands remains overwhelmingly shaped by gendered patterns of work.

Figure 2: Oil Sands Strong Facebook Post These patterns are highly visible in the Facebook groups’ content. The groups frequently rely on a celebration of traditional gender roles, lauding men as workers and as (economic) heads of family. For example, a colourful meme posted on the Oil Sands Strong page exclaims, “My son provides for his pregnant wife & daughter working 12 hours a day in the OilSands! I’m a proud grandmother” (see Figure 2). Oil Respect links to an article headline reporting “Oilpatch worker and family struggle along during difficult times” alongside a

33 Oliver J. Dinius and Angela Vergara, eds., Company Towns in the Americas: Landscape, Power, and Working-Class Communities (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2011).

www.mediatropes.com MediaTropes Vol VII, No 2 (2020) Alicia Massie and Emma Jackson / 51

photo of a blonde woman holding a young child. The comment framing the link contextualizes that this ‘oilpatch worker’ is Chad Miller, founder of the Facebook group Oilfield Dads. These posts are significant in their attention to the roles men play as economic providers for their families—the ‘breadwinners.’ The Facebook groups rely on both optimistic stories lauding male workers and despondent portrayals of unemployed men unable to provide for their families. Through the juxtaposition of these two aspects of the oil economy—boom and bust—this type of ‘breadwinner’ discourse effectively weaves a family’s economic stability into the fluctuations of the oil economy. At the same time, it fuses that stability with the male wage. Drawing on longstanding norms of gendered labour and social reproduction within resource communities, these discourses evoke a nostalgic imaginary of a nuclear, white, working-class family. A Canada’s Energy Citizens post is perhaps the most illustrative, framing a story written by a Fort McMurray woman with the introduction: “A very real, moving and touching story from a self-described ‘oil-wife’ about what the downturn in the energy sector has done to her family” (see Figure 3). The post is punctuated by a collage of photos featuring the couple on their wedding day, the husband in a hard-hat at work, and the father carrying his child and sitting with his daughter by the lake.

Figure 3: Canada's Energy Citizens Facebook Post

www.mediatropes.com MediaTropes Vol VII, No 2 (2020) Alicia Massie and Emma Jackson / 52

Discourses such as these rely on a deeply entrenched cultural understanding of traditional gender roles both in and out of the home. As outlined earlier, resource communities have, for the majority of their history, been shaped by a sharp division between the “masculine” public sphere and the “feminine” private sphere. What becomes clear through these Facebook discourses is that despite the ubiquity of neoliberal ideologies within industry communications, those that celebrate the irrelevance of gender to work in the oilsands and frequently highlight their diversified workforce34—these subsidized public groups continue to employ discourses that rely on traditional conceptions of gender, labour, and family. The impact of such discourses is not that they are coupling the family wage with the economic ups and downs of the oil industry—it has been true for some time that families’ economic stability are indeed deeply dependent upon ‘booms’ in the industry. Rather, it is that discourses touting the male oil wage as fundamental to family and community life “[rely] on the erasure of alternative local histories, identities, and experiences in order to promote the promise of drilling.”35 Discourses such as these also conceal the possibility of alternative family structures, labour practices, and enactments of masculinity and femininity. Within traditional economic and cultural understandings of ‘family,’ women are usually subordinate to men, economically dependent on their husbands, and left to do unpaid domestic work.36 While many people adhere—and indeed choose—this form of family life, it often does not live up to the ideal envisaged. In Fort McMurray, while industry wages remain high, the long hours, extreme commutes, and demanding labour can lead to situations where the non-industry parent, usually the mother, is left “raising children essentially as a single parent.”37 For the male workers, there can be serious health impacts. As Angel (2014) argues:

34 See Dorow, “Gendering,” 275–92; L. E. McKee, “Women in American Energy: De- feminizing Poverty in the Oil and Gas Industries,” Journal of International Women’s Studies 15, no.1 (2014): 167–78; O’Shaughnessy, “Women’s Gendered Experience.” 35 Rich, “Drilling Is Just the Beginning,” 300. 36 Michèle Barrett and Mary McIntosh, The Anti-Social Family, 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 2015); Silvia Federici, Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2012); Barrie Thorne, “Feminism and the Family: Two Decades of Thought,” Rethinking the Family: Some Feminist Questions, 2nd ed., eds. Barrie Thorne and Marilym Yalom (Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1992), 3–30. 37 Peter Scowen, “From Boom Town to Family Town: Meet the Real Fort McMurray,” The Globe and Mail, June 5, 2017, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/alberta/meet-the-real- fort-mcmurray/article24915022/.

www.mediatropes.com MediaTropes Vol VII, No 2 (2020) Alicia Massie and Emma Jackson / 53

Masculine work cultures and what it means to be a “man” in these spaces, a large majority of men do not talk about their feelings or seek help. Instead, these men tend to internalize feelings of exhaustion, loneliness, stress and anxiety or put their physical and mental health “on hold”—until, eventually, they reach their breaking point.38 The discourses presented by these Facebook groups help to reinvigorate the connection between family, men as economic providers, and oil and gas jobs. They bring out a nostalgic ideal of working-class life and frontier masculinity that has long been coupled with fossil fuel development and resource communities. However, a less romantic counter-discourse can be put forth that points out how, even in times of prosperity, communities rarely receive the degree of economic benefit promised to them.39 Certainly, in times of economic recession, or depression, it is largely the communities of workers that experience the sharpest declines in financial stability and quality of life.40 Resource communities must still grapple with the day-to-day realities of environmental degradation, poverty, high cost of living, and fluctuating populations. Though the families denoted in these posts are nuclear and white, resource extraction in the Athabasca region takes place within Indigenous territory, disrupting social economies, cultural life, and family structures. In Fort McMurray, it remains true that industry opportunities are largely only available to able-bodied white men, as women and people of colour remain overrepresented in service and domestic labour contexts. Income inequality continues to grow—men make a median income three times that of women—and many social services essential to families, such as childcare, are inaccessible and unaffordable.41 As Adkin and Miller posit: “The industry with which Albertans have for so long been encouraged to identify is in fact not

38 Angela Corinne Angel, “Voices from the Shadows: Investigating the Identity and Wellbeing of Male Mobile Workers in the Contemporary ‘Boom-Sphere’ Context of the Alberta Oil Sands” (MA thesis, University of Alberta, 2014), 3. 39 Erin Mchenry-Sorber, Kai A. Schafft, Ian Burfoot-Rochford, and Daniella Hall, “The Masculinized Work of Energy Development: Unequal Opportunities and Risks for Women in Pennsylvania Shale Gas Boomtown Communities,” Journal of Rural Social Sciences 31, no. 1 (2016): 1–23. 40 See Mario Toneguzzi, “Alberta Loses 14,000 Jobs in February but Calgary Gains 2,100,” The Calgary Herald, March 13, 2015, https://calgaryherald.com/business/local-business/alberta- loses-14000-jobs-in-february-as-unemployment-rate-rises; Jason Markusoff, “Why Fort McMurray will Never be the Same,” Macleans, April 10, 2017, https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/why-fort-mcmurray-will-never-be-the-same/. 41 Dorow, “Gendering.”

www.mediatropes.com MediaTropes Vol VII, No 2 (2020) Alicia Massie and Emma Jackson / 54

‘Albertan,’ but transnational. What drives its investments decisions has little to do with the provision of long-term, sustainable livelihoods for any particular community in Alberta.”42 These Facebook discourses illustrate that despite the general shift to neoliberalized industry communications—“the preponderance of images of women donning hard hats” as Dorow (2015) describes—discursive constructions of the oilsands and Fort McMurray remain shaped by frontier masculinity and traditional familial ideologies. On these pages, oil, and the wages associated with it, are represented as the foundation for life for families in Fort McMurray.

Prosperity for All: Equating Industry with Family and Workers Following corporations’ public relations strategies, subsidized publics have similarly adopted the approach of equating industry’s interests to those of workers and families. Operating as a form of PR metonymy, posts found within these Facebook groups strategically exchange the word “families” for “industry” in order to obscure the unequal power relationship that exists between the two and blur their often-divergent interests. Discourses such as these advance the myth that benefits to industry and families are one in the same and, by the same token, that any harm sustained by industry is equally harmful to workers and families. Oil Sands Action’s claim that “we must be globally competitive for the sake of our families” offers a salient example, concealing the reality that the greatest benefits of global competitiveness are passed onto shareholders and corporate executives and only selectively trickle down to families and everyday workers.43 In adopting the slogan, “Standing up for Canadian oil and gas families,” Oil Respect in particular has positioned itself as a leader of this strategy (see Figure 4). This group’s page is replete with posts that blur the line between employer and employee, thus stripping the oil and gas industry of any agency and, by extension, of any responsibility for the precarious conditions faced by workers. Instead, many of Oil Respect’s posts create a clear dichotomy between “oil families” and a “radical elite” of political Leftists and environmentalists. In doing so, oil companies are folded in with “oil families”

42 Laurie E. Adkin and Byron Miller, “Alberta, Fossil Capitalism and the Political Ecology of Change,” in First World Petro-Politics: The Political Ecology and Governance of Alberta, ed. Laurie E. Adkin (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016), 552. 43 Adkin and Miller, “Alberta”; Regan Boychuk, “Misplaced Generosity: Extraordinary Profits in Alberta’s Oil and Gas Industry” (Edmonton, AB: Parkland Institute, 2010).

www.mediatropes.com MediaTropes Vol VII, No 2 (2020) Alicia Massie and Emma Jackson / 55

and hidden from view. As one post intended to elicit support reads: “Canadian oil families are under attack. If you care about the future of Canada’s oil and gas industry get involved in the Oil Respect campaign and share with your friends and family. With your help, we will champion this industry and take back our country from the radical elites.” Another seeks to defend against the narrative of corporate power claiming that, “This is the problem with industry detractors; they always contend that the oil and gas industry is made up only of wealthy oilmen. This may be the case in countries like Saudi Arabia and Russia, where resource wealth really does stay in the hands of the 1%.

Figure 4: Oil Respect Facebook Cover Photo In Canada, however, executives make up only a small fraction of the sector.” In some ways echoing the work of Major and Winters (2013), such posts create a “homogenizing narrative” where all those earning a living from the oil and gas industry are portrayed as belonging to this class of the 99%. Through homogenizing workers, shareholders, and corporate executives into one “oil family” class, these discourses muddy the reality of the political economy of the oilsands. Far from offering economic benefits horizontally, the vast majority of Alberta’s extractive wealth does rest firmly in the hands of the 1% and in absentee transnational corporations.44 Through discourses such as this, the layers of power and precarity that exist both within the oil and gas industry, and between this industry and its supporting sectors are obscured from view. The term “oil families” is thus invoked to both blur the profound distinction that exists between employer and employee, and to disguise the complex

44 John Gaventa, Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982); Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate (Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2014).

www.mediatropes.com MediaTropes Vol VII, No 2 (2020) Alicia Massie and Emma Jackson / 56

differences that exist among the employed often along the lines of gender, race, and class. As Major and Winters (2013) note, this pervasive discourse where “Fort McMurray is jobs” for these oil families “obscures the pervasive insecurity that comes with engaging in commodified labour, and insecurity particularly evident since the neoliberal turn and subsequent withdrawal of the state from, for instance, providing the social services that made up a social wage.”45 The posts of these subsidized publics not only hide this reality, but they actively defend industry against its obligations to both its workforce, and the general public. In conflating the interests of oil companies and oil families, corporations are not held accountable for their decisions that harm their workforces. For instance, in February 2016, Suncor announced that it would be building a fleet of 150 driverless trucks, resulting in lay-offs for approximately 400 workers.46 Despite its mission of standing up for oil families, Oil Respect made no mention of the announcement. Instead, its content remained committed to this critique of the “radical elite,” proving the extent to which the blurring of industry and family serves the interests of corporate capital accumulation.

Food on the Table: Discourses of Oil as Lifeblood By selectively bringing in oil as a benefactor to individual families and communities, the groups offer a tribute to oil as the “lifeblood” of the Albertan way of life. Reinforcing what Huber (2014) terms “the addiction metaphor,” oil is presented as an inescapable aspect of everyday life.47 In the Facebook pages, ‘oil as a social relation’ and ‘petroleum products as the material basis for everyday life’ are presented as the entities upon which families rely. A post by Canada’s Energy Citizens opens by stating: As Canadians, we utilize oil and natural gas countless times each day, often without realizing it. From the alarm clock that wakes us up in the morning, to the produce that arrives in our

45 Claire Majors and Tracy Winters, “Community by Necessity: Security, Insecurity, and the Flattening of Class in Fort McMurray, Alberta,” The Canadian Journal of Sociology 38, no. 2 (2013), 144. 46 Dan Healing, “Suncor Driverless Trucks Will Kill 400 Net Jobs, Says Company,” CBC News, January 31, 2018, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/suncor-driverless-trucks-job- losses-1.4512659. 47 Matt Huber, Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and the Forces of Capital (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2013), 3.

www.mediatropes.com MediaTropes Vol VII, No 2 (2020) Alicia Massie and Emma Jackson / 57

local grocery stores thanks to trucks and trains, our daily lives are fueled by oil and natural gas. You can help Canadians maintain our high quality of life by becoming an Energy Citizen today. The post features a linked blog post with the headline “Oil and natural gas keep Canadians going from sunrise to sunset.” In this post, Canadian quality of life is dependent not only upon oil, but upon individuals choosing to lend their support to the industry itself. Another post links oil more explicitly to families (see Figure 5), featuring the image of an oil well framed by mountains superimposed with the words “Share if Canadian oil put food on your table.” The post’s describing text reads: “Supporting Canadian families since 1858.”48 This post directly associates oil—as an abstract but agentivized entity—with a provider role. These discourses exist in parallel and in opposition to the concurrent ‘men as breadwinner’ posts, as here it is not the workers themselves who provide for their families, but rather oil itself. Similar to equating industry with families, these discourses effectively blur the line between employer and employee—paradoxically foregrounding and obscuring industry. Industry is brought into the spotlight but only in such a way that its role as employer is hidden, and its connection to everyday life and social reproduction is emphasized. More than anything, the discourses of oil as lifeblood serve to naturalize and humanize oil. These posts present oil as an all-encompassing, unavoidable, but benevolent force. It is in our cars, toothbrushes, and clothing, but it is also that which puts food on our table. It is oil, not workers or parents, that supports Canadian families. However, for this representation of oil to be tenable, these groups must distort and hide the historically specific social relations that make life in Fort McMurray, and Canada, possible. This type of discourse obscures the consequences of a neoliberal petrostate, which by necessity scours out the cheapest and most efficient sources of labour and natural reserves.49 ‘Life’ under oil is only possible through working for a wage, and through that wage gaining access to a means of subsistence.50 It is not oil, as a vague and all-

48 Canada’s Energy Citizens, Facebook, July 11, 2016, https://www.facebook.com/CanadasEnergyCitizens/photos/a.470229813122836/922997681179 378/. 49 Rich, “Drilling”; David A. Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism, 1st ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Andreas Malm, Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming (New York: Verso, 2016). 50 Huber, Lifeblood.

www.mediatropes.com MediaTropes Vol VII, No 2 (2020) Alicia Massie and Emma Jackson / 58

encompassing presence, that provides that wage—it is transnational and large- scale industry powered by fossil fuels. The history of relations between workers and industry is a long one, and one fraught with struggle, resistance, and assaults.51 A rosy narrative of industry-worker solidarity bypasses the oft- devastating impacts of extractivism: If coal created an underclass to rival India’s Untouchables and oil-cursed poor countries struggle for independence and self- determination (and maybe a few rich countries too), and children have borne an unconscionable portion of the depredation, then net beneficence is at least questionable just on cultural grounds. Add the economic (assuming one can calculate the net discounted value of future costs of present consumption), the ecological (from weather and hormone disruption to sea level rise and airplane-assisted pandemics), and the ethical (the “losers” in this game seem to grow by the day, from Newcastle to north China, from New Orleans to New York), and fossil fuel net beneficence is not just questionable but highly doubtful.52 Alberta, and by extension its workers, families, and citizens, have had to live with the myriad of challenges brought about by neoliberal extractivism. Citizens of Alberta—whether they rely on an oil wage or not—exist within the framework of a rentier state dependent upon fossil fuel extraction.53 Through fusing high wages, frontier masculinity, and neoliberalism, the oil and gas sector, alongside the Albertan government, have both naturalized and normalized the hollowing of the public sector. It goes relatively unquestioned that Fort McMurray-ites are having to adapt to “flexibilized” work, a childcare crisis, and a shadow population of temporary foreign workers.54 Discourses of oil as lifeblood serve to reinforce what Cowie and Heathcott (2003) call an “aura of permanence,” a façade of stability brought about by industrial

51 See Henry Veltmeyer and James Petras, The New Extractivism: A Post-Neoliberal Development Model or Imperialism of the Twenty-First Century? (London: Zed Books, 2014). 52 Thomas Princen, “The Cultural: The Magic, the Vision, the Power,” in Ending the Fossil Fuel Era, eds. Thomas Princen, Jack P. Manno, and Pamela L. Martin (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015), 82. 53 Adkin and Miller, “Alberta.” 54 See Dorow, “Gendering”; Jason Foster and Alison Taylor, “In the Shadows: Exploring the Notion of ‘Community’ for Temporary Foreign Workers in a Boomtown,” Canadian Journal of Sociology 38, no. 2 (2013): 167–85.

www.mediatropes.com MediaTropes Vol VII, No 2 (2020) Alicia Massie and Emma Jackson / 59

development, rather than addressing the reality of existence as a worker in a neoliberal petrostate.55

Concluding Thoughts As powerful forces in the history of capitalism and globalization, oil corporations have become increasingly adept at shaping their communications to gain the confidence of the public and align themselves with the communities they rely upon.56 However, the public has become increasingly skeptical of corporate communications, and the efficacy of traditional advertising, and even corporate social responsibility communications, remain up for debate.57 CAPP’s shift towards a subsidized public communication strategy reflects, perhaps, a recognition on the part of industry that there is power in democratic discourse.58 However, it is troublesome that through these subsidized public supporter groups we are seeing discourses that represent a return to traditional gender roles, the erasure of industry’s role as the employer, and a false portrayal of the benefits Canadians receive from the oil and gas industry. The familial stories that permeate these pages rely on discourses that often contradict local experiences, identities, and histories in order to promote a false, but idealized, version of the petro-economy. Community and family are deeply rooted social structures of production and reproduction relied upon to provide labour force stability for petro- capitalism. As these Facebook groups illustrate, representations of family are a vital element of oil’s cultural presence in Alberta and Fort McMurray. Far from being beyond gender, these discourses help to illustrate the extent to which neoliberal ‘post-feminist’ understandings and representations of gender within resource communities remain fictitious. Traditional understandings of gender and masculinity continue to be deeply embedded in the discourses of these Facebook groups.

55 Jefferson Cowie and Joseph Heathcott, eds., Beyond the Ruins: The Meanings of Deindustrialization (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003), 4. 56 Jacob Matz and Daniel Renfrew, “Selling ‘Racking’: Energy in Depth and the Marcellus Shale,” Environmental Communication 10, no. 1 (2015), 288–306; Bsumek, Schneider, Schwarze, and Peeples, “Corporate Ventriloquism,” 21–43; Rich, “Drilling.” 57 Gerard Hanlon and Peter Fleming, “Updating the Critical Perspective on Corporate Social Responsibility,” Sociology Compass 3, no. 6 (2009): 937–39. 58 Edward Walker, Grassroots for Hire: Public Affairs Consultants in American Democracy (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

www.mediatropes.com MediaTropes Vol VII, No 2 (2020) Alicia Massie and Emma Jackson / 60

It remains unclear to what extent these discourses are derived from industry interests and to what degree they represent the beliefs and understandings of the communities they seek to speak for.59 It will be important to continue parsing these groups and the different discourses arising from this new media strategy. Certainly, Canada’s Energy Citizens—the first group to appear and that which is most transparently linked to the oil and gas industry—represents an important node in the shifting landscape of how oil is represented in media. Discourses that seek to humanize industry, marry its interests with those of its workers, and construct oil itself as a fundamental and inescapable force in daily life are surely serving the interests of CAPP and oil and gas companies. Through the discourses presented on these Facebook pages, fossil fuel development and extraction are seen as integral to community and family life, and citizens of Alberta and Fort McMurray are distanced from practical alternatives to extraction and more complex and equitable social, political, and ecological futures. Constituting Fort McMurray, Alberta, and its families as completely and always reliant upon extraction leads to the erasure of not only alternative possibilities for being, but also obscures identities, experiences, and histories that are currently shaping the Alberta petroculture. Discourses that hyper-emphasize the white working-class family obscure complex class, gender, and race relations and the pervasive insecurity that underpins the neoliberal oil economy. It is important for researchers and activists interested in how oil is both transformed in and shaping media to continue to critically analyse discourses in these new contexts. While traditional public relations and advertisements remain discursively powerful, it appears as though subsidized public groups are playing an important role in how fossil fuel industries, and indeed oil itself, is legitimated.60 Finally, it remains important for critical scholars of oil and energy to apply feminist theory and methods to research. Feminist inquiry can bring to light new aspects of petroculture that remain under-investigated, including, but not limited to, how women and social reproduction are represented and understood in discourses of oil. At stake is not only our understanding of the ways our world is mediated by oil. Rather, in a time of irreversible climate change, it will be women, people of colour, and the

59 See Carol Linnitt and Donald Gutstein, “‘Grassroots’ Canada Action Carries Deep Ties to Conservative Party, Oil and Gas Industry,” Desmog Canada, 2015; Suzanne Goldenberg, “Oil Lobby Group Recruited Canadian Minister for Secret Strategy Meeting,” The Guardian, May 28, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/may/28/oil-lobby-group-recruited- canadian-minister-for-secret-strategy-meeting. 60 Gunster, et al., “Fossil.”

www.mediatropes.com MediaTropes Vol VII, No 2 (2020) Alicia Massie and Emma Jackson / 61

working class who will feel the impacts of a threatened planet most profoundly.

www.mediatropes.com MediaTropes Vol VII, No 2 (2020) Alicia Massie and Emma Jackson / 62

Works Cited

Adkin, Laurie E., and Byron Miller. “Alberta, Fossil Capitalism and the Political Ecology of Change.” In First World Petro-Politics: The Political Ecology and Governance of Alberta, edited by Laurie E. Adkin, 527–60. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2016. Angel, Angela Corinne. “Voices from the Shadows: Investigating the Identity and Wellbeing of Male Mobile Workers in the Contemporary ‘Boom- Sphere’ Context of the Alberta Oil Sands.” Master’s thesis, University of Alberta, 2014. Barrett, Michèle, and Mary McIntosh. The Anti-Social family, 2nd edition. London: Verso, 2015. Boychuk, Regan. “Misplaced Generosity: Extraordinary Profits in Alberta’s Oil and Gas Industry.” Edmonton, AB: Parkland Institute, 2010. Bsumek, Peter K., Jen Schneider, Steve Schwarze, and Jennifer Peeples. “Corporate Ventriloquism: Corporate Advocacy, the Coal Industry, and the Appropriation of Voice.” In Voice and Environmental Communication, edited by Jennifer Peeples and Stephen Depoe, 21–43. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Canada’s Energy Citizens. Facebook. July 11, 2016. https://www.facebook.com/CanadasEnergyCitizens/photos/a.470229813 122836/922997681179378/. Connell, Raewyn. Masculinities. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 1995. Cowie, Jefferson, and Joseph Heathcott, eds. Beyond the Ruins: The Meanings of Deindustrialization. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003. Dinius, Oliver J., and Angela Vergara, eds. Company Towns in the Americas: Landscape, Power, and Working-Class Communities. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 2011. Dorow, Sara. “Gendering Energy Extraction in Fort McMurray.” In Alberta Oil and the Decline of Democracy in Canada, edited by Meneel Shrivastava and Lorna Stefanick, 275–92. Edmonton, AB: Athabasca University Press, 2015.

www.mediatropes.com MediaTropes Vol VII, No 2 (2020) Alicia Massie and Emma Jackson / 63

Dorow, Sara, and Sara O’Shaughnessy. “Fort McMurray, Wood Buffalo, and the Oil/Tar Sands: Revisiting the Sociology of Community.” Canadian Journal of Sociology, 38, no. 2 (2013): 121–40. Ely, Robin J., and Debra E. Meyerson. “An Organizational Approach to Undoing Gender: The Unlikely Case of Offshore Oil Platforms.” Research in Organizational Behavior 30 (2010): 3–34. England, Paula. “The Gender Revolution: Uneven and Stalled.” Gender & Society 24, no. 2 (2010): 149–66. Fairclough, Norman. “Critical Discourse Analysis and the Marketization of Public Discourse: The Universities.” Discourse & Society 4, no. 2 (1993): 133–86. Federici, Silvia. Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2012. Ferguson, Nelson. “From Coal Pits to Tar Sands: Labour Migration Between an Atlantic Canadian Region and the Athabasca Oil Sands.” Just Labour: A Canadian Journal of Work and Society 17 (2011): 106–18. Filteau, Matthew R. “Who Are Those Guys? Undoing the Oilfield’s Roughneck Masculinity.” PhD dissertation, Pennsylvania State University, 2012. Foster, Jason, and Alison Taylor. “In the Shadows: Exploring the Notion of ‘Community’ for Temporary Foreign Workers in a Boomtown.” Canadian Journal of Sociology 38, no. 2 (2013): 167–85. Gaventa, John. Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982. Goodstein, Eban S. The Trade-off Myth: Fact And Fiction About Jobs and the Environment. Washington, DC: Island Press/Shearwater Books, 1999. Gunster, Shane, Robert Neubauer, John Birmingham, and Alicia Massie. “Fossil Nation: Extractivist Public Relations on Social Media.” In Regime of Obstruction: How Corporate Power Blocks Energy Democracy, edited by William Carroll. Edmonton, AB: Athabasca University Press, in press. Halseth, Greg. “‘We Came for the Work’: Situating Employment Migration in BC’s Small, Resource-Based Communities.” Canadian Geographer 43 (1999): 363–81.

www.mediatropes.com MediaTropes Vol VII, No 2 (2020) Alicia Massie and Emma Jackson / 64

Hanlon, Gerard., and Peter Fleming. “Updating the Critical Perspective on Corporate Social Responsibility.” Sociology Compass 3, no. 6 (2009): 937–39. Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism, 1st edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. Hill, Nicole, Angele Alook, and Ian Hussey. “How Gender and Race Shape Experiences of Work in Alberta’s Oil Industry.” Edmonton: Parkland Institute, 2017. https://www.parklandinstitute.ca/how_gender_and_race_shape_experie nces_of_work_in_albertas_oil_industry. Hochschild, Arlie R. The Second Shift. New York: Viking, 1989. Hovorka, Alice, and Colleen McLeod. “Women in a Transitioning Canadian Resource Town.” Journal of Rural and Community Development 3 (2008): 78–92. Huber, Matt. Lifeblood: Oil, Freedom, and the Forces of Capital. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2013. Klein, Naomi. This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate. Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2014. LeMenager, Stephanie. Living Oil: Petroleum Culture in the American Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Lischinsky, Alon. “What Is the Environment Doing in My Report? Analyzing the Environment-as-Stakeholder Thesis through Corpus Linguistics.” Environmental Communication 9, no. 4 (October 2, 2015): 539–59. Lucas, Rex A. Minetown, Milltown, Railtown: Life in Canadian Communities of Single Industry. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1971. Luka, M. E., and Sheena Wilson. A Politics of Readings-and-Recording: Feminist and Indigenous Perspectives on Energy Cultures, Energy Transition, and Social Transformation in the Anthropocene. Manuscript in preparation, 2017. Luxton, Meg. More Than a Labour of Love: Three Generations of Women's Work in the Home, Vol. 2. Toronto: Canadian Scholars’ Press, 1980. Mah, Andrew. “Outreach Fundamentals.” Context: Energy Examined 3, no. 2 (2015): 12–15.

www.mediatropes.com MediaTropes Vol VII, No 2 (2020) Alicia Massie and Emma Jackson / 65

Majors, Claire, and Tracy Winters. “Community by Necessity: Security, Insecurity, and the Flattening of Class in Fort McMurray, Alberta.” The Canadian Journal of Sociology, 38, no. 2 (2013): 141–65. Malm, Andreas. Fossil Capital: The Rise of Steam Power and the Roots of Global Warming. New York: Verso, 2016. Marchak, Patricia. Green Gold: The Forest Industry in British Columbia. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, 1983. Matz, Jacob, and Daniel Renfrew. “Selling ‘Fracking’: Energy in Depth and the Marcellus Shale.” Environmental Communication 10, no. 1 (2015): 288–306. Mchenry-Sorber, Erin, Kai A. Schafft, Ian Burfoot-Rochford, and Daniella Hall. “The Masculinized Work of Energy Development: Unequal Opportunities and Risks for Women in Pennsylvania Shale Gas Boomtown Communities.” Journal of Rural Social Sciences 31, no. 1 (2016). McKee, L. E. “Women in American Energy: De-feminizing Poverty in the Oil and Gas Industries.” Journal of International Women's Studies 15, no. 1 (2014): 167–78. Milan, Anne, Leslie A. Keown, and Covadonga Robles Urquijo. Families, Living Arrangements & Unpaid Work. Ottawa, ON: Statistics Canada, 2011. Miller, Gloria. “Frontier Masculinity in the Oil Industry: The Experience of Women Engineers.” Gender, Work, and Organization 11 (2004): 47–73. Moen, Elizabeth. “Women in Energy Boom Towns.” Psychology of Women Quarterly 6 (1981): 99–112. Moen, Elizabeth, and Elise Boulding. Women and the Social Costs of Economic Development: Two Colorado Case Studies. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1981. O’Shaughnessy, Sara. “Women’s Gendered Experiences of Rapid Resource Development in the Canadian North: New Opportunities or Old Challenges?” PhD dissertation, University of Alberta, 2011. O’Shaughnessy, Sara, and Naomi T. Krogman. “Gender as Contradiction: From Dichotomies to Diversity in Natural Resource Extraction.” Journal of Rural Studies 27 (2011): 134–43.

www.mediatropes.com MediaTropes Vol VII, No 2 (2020) Alicia Massie and Emma Jackson / 66

Princen, Thomas. “The Cultural: The Magic, the Vision, the Power.” In Ending the Fossil Fuel Era, edited by Thomas Princen, Jack P. Manno, and Pamela L. Martin, 53–96. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015. Reed, Maureen G. Taking Stands: Gender and the Sustainability of Rural Communities. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, 2003. Rich, Jessica L. “Drilling Is Just the Beginning: Romanticizing Rust Belt Identities in the Campaign for Shale Gas.” Environmental Communication 10, no. 3 (2016): 292–304. Santi, R. “Women in Mining: The Progress and the Problems.” Mineral Bulletin MR152, Energy, Mines and Resources. Ottawa, 1976. Thorne, Barrie. “Feminism and the Family: Two Decades of Thought.” In Rethinking the Family: Some Feminist Questions, 2nd edition, edited by Barrie Thorne and Marilym Yalom, 3–30. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1992. Thorne, Barrie, and Marilyn Yalom, eds. Rethinking the Family: Some Feminist Questions, 2nd edition. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press, 1992. Valdivia, Gabriela. “Petro-Capitalism.” In Green Politics: An A-to-Z Guide, edited by Dustin Mulvaney and Pail Robbins, 312–14. London: SAGE, 2010. Veit, Susanne. “Women in Mining: an Exploratory Study.” Report for British Columbia Department of Economic Development. Victoria, 1976. Veltmeyer, Henry, and James Petras. The New Extractivism: A Post-Neoliberal Development Model or Imperialism of the Twenty-First Century? London: Zed Books, 2014. Walker, Edward. Grassroots for Hire: Public Affairs Consultants in American Democracy. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2014. Walkerdine, Valerie. “Reclassifying Upward Mobility: Femininity and the Neo- Liberal Subject.” Gender and Education 15, no. 3 (2003): 237–48. Wilson, Sheena. “Gendering Oil: Tracing Western Petrosexual Relations.” In Oil Culture, edited by Ross Barrett and Daniel Worden, 244–63. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2014.