Contentious Agency and Natural Resource Politics

The political economy of ‘flex trees’: a preliminary analysis

“…Second, to overcome this natural limitation, companies have sought uniformity in forestry practices to get only one or two of these products. The ITP pulp plants in the global South, which are controlled by corporate land ownership, escape the dilemma above, as they own or otherwise control the land and thus do not produce logs as the pulp mills do not need logs; nor do they have to compete with the buyers of the other tree parts (numbers 1 and 3) (Kröger 2013b). Third, as a total flexing across the different uses of all tree parts is difficult, impossible or unsuitable in current practice (the quality of the end product is considered poor), deeper development has taken place in flexing subpathways for all three tree parts during the processing phase, as profit-maximizing tree sellers and buyers explore their fullest use.…”

“…The potential for construction and industrial wood flexing, for example, which typically requires trees with a diameter of at least 18 cm, is limited in some regions due to the dominance of the pulp investment boom (Kröger 2013a(Kröger , 2013b, which relies on fiber-wood harvested at less than 18 cm and replanted. Energy-wood is typically below 9 cm, though larger diameter trees can also be used for both energy and fiber production.…”

Spatial Causalities in Resource Rushes: Notes from the Finnish Mining Boom

“…I argue that symbolic, social and physical space‐changes occur as simultaneous, asymmetrical and cascading transformations of ideas, social relations and nature, these being mutually constituted but not equally in all situations: the tendencies and mechanisms of inter‐ and intra‐space changing of power relations are context‐specific. Prior research along these lines on global industrial forestry (Kröger , ) has shown how the creation of capitalist class relations in the social space acted as the principal cause leading to changes in the physical space (expansion of tree plantations). This observation is supported by other empirical work on resource booms – for example, by Walker (, 168), showing how the creation of the Californian natural resource exploitation (with mining in the key role) was based fundamentally on a specific capitalist order in which ‘property and class formation established access to resources and motivation for their discovery’.…”

“…The Sámi are living through a historic upsurge in resistance to their centuries‐long colonization: also, those who have become critical of mines within the general Finnish population have become more systematic, networked and better organized in their resistance, filing complaints and protesting. These acts of resistance, particularly the knowledge practices created and suggested by them as a way for the typically passive citizens to steer their action towards contentious agency (Kröger ), have been taken much more seriously after the problems have become undeniable.…”

“…The creation of objectified symbolic capital is the mechanism through which a direct link and interchangeability are created between physical and symbolic spaces: this tool of space‐linking can be used also by those resisting appropriation of land (and has been used by, for example, Landless Movement activists in making land sacred in Brazil and re‐symbolizing capitalist land uses) (Kröger , ). Land, minerals and water are the central objectified symbolic capital in mining conflicts, as it is through their symbolic stability, public acceptance and legitimacy, of how they are used, that the maintenance or decline of the land‐, mineral‐ and water‐devouring mining investment model depends.…”