Resource-making, materiality and the disruptive geographies of the extractive industries in the Asia-Pacific

Abstract

This essay introduces a Special Section on 'Recent Developments in the Extractive Industries in the Asia-Pacific'. Though diverse in their approaches and objects of study, the five articles speak strongly to understandings of extractive industry as a socio-spatial and political-economic process of 'disruption'. Taking the disruptive possibilities of the "socio-spatial dialectic" as our starting point, and drawing inspiration from work on the "operations of capital" and "world ecology", we briefly sketch out a set of relational and disruptive moments that are identified in this rewarding collection. Above all from this Special Section we are reminded of the tight, recursive imbrication of mineral extraction and resource-making with processes of state formation and capitalist accumulation. Show more