Mining and Mineral Resources

Abstract

Mining is one of the basic activities by which humans acquire raw materials. Mineral resources may be classified in different ways, reflecting socially meaningful differences in how minerals are utilized. Modern societies are materially complex and the range of mineral resources has grown over time. Their integral role in modern economic life means mining and mineral resources occupy several core areas of policy concern. Resource economics and political science have traditionally dominated the policy space surrounding mineral resources, but geographers have made significant interventions by querying the scales and spaces through which mining and “mineral problems” should be understood; highlighting interdependencies between extraction and consumption, and between mining and other livelihood activities; and critiquing assumptions about physical scarcity commonly associated with mineral resources.