Matt Wilde is an anthropologist and Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Leicester.

"This is an excellent book to understand the ethical and moral dimensions of contemporary politics in Venezuela and it should be required reading to understand the current moment in Venezuelan politics." —Juan L. Rodríguez, Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology --- "A Blessing and a Curse is ambitious in its multiscalar analyses of both neighborhood political activism and of how resource dependency limits national projects to promote sovereignty and improve people's lives. Wilde maintains a balance between micro- and macroanalysis that I found inspiring." —Amy Cooper, American Ethnologist --- "This is ethnography at its best: an absorbing story that provides the knotty richness that anthropology does so well. Not only is this book sensitive to the complexities of utopian projects but it is compellingly written and at times, even moving; Wilde has a gift for weaving emotional texture into the narrative." —Amy Penfield, Journal of Development Studies --- "Wilde gives readers a fascinating exploration of what he calls 'the hybrid petrostate' and exigencies that led to the reproduction of the very structures of dependency that sparked the revolution in the first place. Wilde tells this story from a unique vantage point—the life histories of a family of working-class Chavista activists in the city of Valencia." —Aaron Kappeler, Focaal --- "This is the book on Venezuela that we have been waiting for. Through the lives of the Hernández family and their neighbors, Matt Wilde paints an intimate portrait of the long arc of the Bolivarian Revolution as experienced from the urbanbarrios. It is an ethnographically sensitive, theoretically insightful account of the promises and failings of one of the twenty-first century's most consequential political movements. A highly readable and eminently teachable text." —Robert Samet, Union College --- "In A Blessing and a Curse, Wilde shows the value of sensitive long-term ethnography to our understanding of this most complex and troubled of places. Cutting through the standard polemics, his nuanced approach draws out the consequences of Venezuelans' relationship with oil for everyday life, moral economies, and kinship as much as for macro-level political economy. A remarkable achievement." —Sian Lazar, University of Cambridge --- "Venezuela's ambitious project of redistributive social transformation inspired many, but did not go according to plan. This book tells us about the role of oil wealth and its undermining of other possible forms of prosperity; it also gives a vivid account of the aspirations of those who were trying to operationalise a fairer society, and how they put their 'barrio socialism' into practice." —Deborah James, The London School of Economics and Political Science