Intergenerational equity and the geographical ebb and flow of resources

Resources are vexing!

“…This scholarship pays attention to how new forms of value are attached to the material properties of resources (living and nonliving)-and to their transformation-to meet (new) capitalist promises. We observe such novel resource-making, for example, in the expansion of renewable energy projects (Anderson et al 2019;Delgado 2021); in the development of new methodologies of resource valuation (Bond and Basu 2021); in the reframing of forests as "carbon removal" climate change mitigation strategies (Carton and Edstedt 2021); in the medical "resourcification" of human tissue and body parts (Fannin These lines of inquiry, and many others, converged in the RHCRG. To help make sense of them collectively, we developed a heuristic device that we call "resourcemaking/world-making," which builds on the critical and relational approach to resources outlined above.…”

“…This orientation, along with CRG's “sensitiv[ity] to the histories and geographies of the political economic setting” (Watts and Peluso 2013, 192), allows scholars to name and denounce the exploitation and injustice inherent to colonial-capitalist resource systems and, in doing so, to respond to a normative commitment to human “betterment,” broadly defined. In making dominant graphings of the world visible and turning attention to devalued or excluded perspectives and experiences, CRG's aim is to interrupt oppressive systems that degrade socialities and preclude alternative futures (Bond and Basu 2021; Courtheyn and Kamal 2021; Naslund and McKeithen 2021).…”

“…First domesticated and dispersed throughout present-day China through Han colonial expansion, cultivated soybeans later accompanied and fueled industrialization as Japan colonized Korea and “Manchuria” as well as the colonization of South American “hinterlands” (Oliveira 2021). Others examine the role of resources in consolidating configurations of political-economic power, such as geopolitical dominance, corporate structure and operations, and nationalisms (Bustos-Gallardo 2021; Campling 2021; Marston 2019; Nast 2021; Perreault 2021; Zalik 2021). Alternatively, taking the perspective of agency and “bodies in the system” (Agard-Jones 2013) can reveal how people move into and out of various conditions of resource-enabled capitalist expansion, degradation, and domination (Nast 2021; Zhu and Peluso 2021) and what they imagine might come after capitalist resource-based systems (Huber 2021).…”

“…This scholarship pays attention to how new forms of value are attached to the material properties of resources (living and nonliving)—and to their transformation—to meet (new) capitalist promises. We observe such novel resource-making, for example, in the expansion of renewable energy projects (Anderson et al 2019; Delgado 2021); in the development of new methodologies of resource valuation (Bond and Basu 2021); in the reframing of forests as “carbon removal” climate change mitigation strategies (Carton and Edstedt 2021); in the medical “resourcification” of human tissue and body parts (Fannin 2021); and in more. Such observations prompt critical resource geographers to ask future-oriented, speculative questions, such as: Will reinventing resources reproduce and deepen the power inequities of prior resource systems or open possibilities for more egalitarian resource governance (Bebbington et al 2021; Delgado 2021)?…”

“…Such observations prompt critical resource geographers to ask future-oriented, speculative questions, such as: Will reinventing resources reproduce and deepen the power inequities of prior resource systems or open possibilities for more egalitarian resource governance (Bebbington et al 2021; Delgado 2021)? Can natural capital accounting be reappropriated to support the struggle against extractivism (Bond and Basu 2021)? What new ethical concerns emerge from the proliferation of novel forms of resource-making, and might these sow seeds of resistance to historically uneven geographies of resources (Curley 2021; Shapiro-Garza et al 2021)?…”