Oil territorialities, social life, and legitimacy in the Peruvian Amazon

Extractive industry activities are today an integral part of social life and economic relations across multiple sites. Yet, how and under which conditions do extractive industries insert themselves within and potentially transform territorial dynamics, social relations, and local governance arrangements? The debate is often polarized between competing narratives of social critique depicting corporate power, conflict, and imposition and insider perspectives stressing corporate social responsibility and environmental sustainability. This article offers an ethnographic account of oil exploration in the Peruvian Amazon coupled with a broader discussion about legitimacy building at the extractive frontier. Addressing the multiple ways in which oil companies engage with local constituencies and socially embedded economic relations, it suggests how social relations have gone from being a residual matter of contention to becoming an area of strategic intervention and corporate action through safeguard measures and social licenses.