S1/E3 Sita Balani & Tabitha Lasley’s: Gender, class and (North Sea) Oil

In this episode Sita is in conversation with Tabitha about her non-fiction debut, Sea State: A Memoir. This book explores the world of North Sea Oil – an industry often overlooked despite its huge economic and ecological significance. Lasley is drawn to the rig workers – working class men who find themselves making big money by living in conditions of isolation, homosociality, and infrastructural negligence. She weaves ethnographic insights with the story of her affair with a married rig worker. The interview explores the relationship between money, masculinity and power, the role of class, home, and family in our desires, and the hidden significance of oil in the making of gender. Links: https://www.waterstones.com/book/sea-state/tabitha-lasley/9780008390976 About Structure of Feeling In this Surviving Society miniseries, Sita Balani draws on the ideas of socialist thinker Raymond Williams who coined the term ‘structure of feeling’ to capture our collective emotional experience of social change. Interviewing Kieran Yates, Yara Rodrigues Fowler, Alfie Bown and Tabitha Lasley, these conversations reveal how writing can help us to trace the texture of everyday life, the rhythms of relationships forged as the old social contract frays, and the moments of possibility that emerge in this time of political rupture. These writers document the ways in which powerful political forces are felt in the tempo of an individual life, and the agency we have to shape this changing world.