Resource geography II: What makes resources political?

Abstract

What makes resources political? We often imagine that politics is something done to resources (i.e. larger contestations over access to and control over resources). In this second “progress report”, I question whether resource politics is simply about fighting over stuff. How does the materiality of resources themselves shape broader conceptions of “the political” in general? I highlight the role of resources in shaping three central meanings of the political or politics. First, the commonsense ideology of politics as electoral contests over political power. Second, the state – as the sphere of “the political” – is constructed as a geographical entity based on a specific form of territoriality. Third, the nation-state reflects a complex political duality: both an institutional state apparatus and a cultural imaginary of shared nationhood. I conclude with some thoughts on the need to expand the terrain of the political in resource geography.

Spatial Differentiation of Variegated Capitalisms: A Comparative Analysis of Russian and Australian Oil and Gas Corporate City Networks

“…Elsewhere, global interconnections emerged from centralized dirigiste state control (Hanson 2009), which loosened as the Eastern Bloc gradually disintegrated. Petro-states (such as Saudi Arabia) also adopted tight state-led modes of integrating into global markets (Labban 2008;Huber 2019), indicating that capitalist development was not necessarily connected with neoliberalism. The rapidly growing global economic role of China has also been strongly articulated by the state, with state-owned enterprises dominating strategically significant sectors (Peck and Zhang 2013).…”

Resource-making controversies: Knowledge, anticipatory politics and economization of unconventional fossil fuels

“…Yet, at a time when there is a surge to revive resource and energy geographies (Bridge, 2011b(Bridge, , 2014Bridge et al, 2012;Calvert, 2016;Huber, 2015Huber, , 2018Zimmerer, 2011), the making of unconventional fossil fuels and its effects on the science and politics of resource development have largely remained under the radar of critical geographical inquiry, especially when compared to the burgeoning literatures on 'public perceptions of fracking' (see, inter alia, Evensen and Stedman, 2016;Metze and Dodge, 2016;Thomas et al, 2017;Williams et al, 2017). While there is an increasingly rich body of geographical research on traditional fossil fuel resources and infrastructures, unconventionals are only now beginning to elicit sustained scholarly interest, often triggered by the grubby realities of commercial exploitation, such as the bitumen and shale gas booms in Canada and the USA.…”

Socio-spatial dimensions in energy transitions: Applying the TPSN framework to case studies in Germany

“…Taking the role of power into account may also mean thinking of the politicization and depoliticization of the dimensions of the framework. The Energiewende, as an endeavour of the nation-state, and the myriad local and regional ways of dealing with this political project, show that territories, places, scales, networks, and their combinations can play an important role in defining 'the political' (Huber, 2018) itself.…”

“…Taking the role of power into account may also mean thinking of the politicization and depoliticization of the dimensions of the framework. The Energiewende, as an endeavour of the nation-state, and the myriad local and regional ways of dealing with this political project, show that territories, places, scales, networks, and their combinations can play an important role in defining ‘the political’ (Huber, 2018) itself. At the same time, it is necessary to better understand TPSN not only as clear and overtly political strategies, but also as attempts to remove some issues, such as the private, technical, or managerial (Jessop, 2014).…”