CULTURA, PODER Y PETRÓLEO: Campos petroleros y la construcción de ciudadanía en Venezuela.

This research paper analyzes the role that multinational oil companies played in the formation of social concepts and citizen participation which were promoted in the oil camps of Venezuela and which served as an important model for varios sectors of Venezuelan society. The experience in oil camps reconfigured regional identities and introduced a new lifestyle, reformulating the use of public and private space, the management of time, and also comsumption patterns. Conscious of the dislocation that employment in the new and unfamiliar oil industry implied, companies sought to incorporate the family into this process and redefined the role of women as key to the socialization process. This paper analyzes the participation of intellectual goups, and the middle class which colaborated with the oil companies in order to promote a national cultural project and civil society which would promote certain legitimacy in relation to the transnational companies in the country. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]