Resource nationalism

Abstract

Although ‘resources’ and ‘nationalism’ are core analytical categories in geography, the concept of ‘resource nationalism’ has received little attention in the discipline. We address this lacuna by reviewing relevant literature across the social sciences, and tracing key concepts and scalar frames to advance a critical approach to resource nationalism. In contrast to realist approaches, we understand it as a political discourse mobilized by a wide range of actors. Highlighting its multiple, co-existing, and often contradictory narratives about places, subjects, identities, and materialities, we illustrate the relevance of this critical framework with brief examples from Kazakhstan, Bolivia, and the USA.

Gender, nature and nation: Resource nationalism on primary sector reality TV

“…We find Koch and Perreault’s (2019) critical view of resource nationalism, and the cultural politics thereof, particularly useful. They see it as both ‘political discourse, applied to political and economic thinking about how a state and its population should manage and distribute profits derived from natural resources’ and as an opportunity for feelings of ‘collective belonging [to be] expressed through the idiom of natural resource’ (Koch and Perreault, 2019: 611–612). In the case of resource nationalism in the USA specifically, scholarship claims that it is expressed through ‘an idiom of energy security and vulnerability’ and that it highlights and works to reinforce/ensure ‘perceived rights to individual liberty, automobility and material consumption, and the patriotic imperative to make productive use of the country’s vast store of resources to further these ends’ (Koch and Perreault, 2019: 623–624).…”

“…In some countries, resource nationalism is distinctly state-centric. That is, funding, policy and common cultural norms and ideas support the notion that resource extraction is both central to the national interest and that the state is the appropriate authority to regulate access and activity, and to (re)distribute benefits (Childs, 2016; Koch and Perreault, 2019). In contrast, however, American resource nationalism is said to valorize individual freedom, risk-taking and entrepreneurialism both within and outside of US borders (Koch and Perreault, 2019; McCarthy 2019).…”

Authoritarianism, Populism, and the Environment: Comparative Experiences, Insights, and Perspectives

“…Claiming to speak for and from "the people" is a move that, ultimately, requires the drawing of a political boundary between those who are included in that group and those who are not. For precisely that reason, Swyngedouw (2010), Ranci ere (2016), Hofstadter (1960), M€ uller (2016) and many others reject arguments that there can be truly left or progressive populisms, suggesting instead that in the end, populism is always necessarily antidemocratic, usually constructed and deployed by and for elites despite its superficial opposition to them and all too often enacted along lines of racialized identities. Yet a substantial and growing body of theorists (e.g., Laclau 1977Laclau , 2005Hardt and Negri 2005;Badiou 2016;Grattan 2016;Mouffe 2016;Gerbaudo 2017) have argued that truly progressive, democratic, and inclusive versions of populism are both possible and politically promising.…”

Changing geographies of the state: themes, challenges and futures

“…Like the commodification of public land, neoliberal logics have been jointly harnessed by those acting 'in the name of the state' and in the 'private' sector to promote extractive industries through land sales, leases and other market-based contracts to exploit the natural resources of a state's territory -or what lays beneath it. This is often articulated through the language of 'resource nationalism' (Koch and Perreault 2019), supposed to enrich a nation by filling state coffers, but these extractivist enterprises are also promoted through the pro-market language of new or reformed states 'joining' the international market economy. This was especially evident in the formerly communist states of Eastern Europe of the Soviet Union as they transitioned to market economies (e.g.…”