Entrepreneurial capitalism: US oil private equity in an era of fracking and climate change

Drawing on ethnographic research in Houston, Texas, I explore how and why notions of the entrepreneur and entrepreneurship are mobilised to orient interlocutors in US hydrocarbon finance ethically. I show how contemporary notions of the entrepreneur circulate within the US oil and gas industry in ways that dovetail with the romanticised figure of the independent oil men, on which the industry was founded. The entrepreneur, I argue, is a powerful moral archetype on which claims about how economic value is created are both narrated and performed. Tracing the etymology of this archetype reveals its conceptual and moral underpinnings, which interlocutors draw on to justify and make their commitment to American capitalism more attractive. I demonstrate this using the example of hydrocarbon private equity between 2000 and 2020. This popular moral archetype, and its romanticisation, privileges individual agency over the structural inequalities that enable such capacities to be exercised. I conclude by suggesting that this moral archetype, and the way it shapes our worlds, requires critical scrutiny and should be challenged in an era defined by existential challenges that require collective action.