Introduction

• Resources encompass diverse physical entities extracted and repurposed to fulfill specific promises or goals, such as energy generation, agricultural fertilization, or food supply.
• Resource-making involves extracting entities from existing relations and integrating them into new systems with distinct infrastructures, logics, temporalities, and valuation systems.
• Valuation processes underpin resource-making, determining which entities and relations are deemed more valuable, raising questions about the context and agents involved in these judgments.
• Critical resource-centered scholarship examines resource systems, emphasizing their materiality, spatiality, and the unequal power relations they perpetuate.
• This scholarship critiques dominant capitalist modes of production, consumption, and disposal of established resources like copper, oil, and minerals.
• It also explores the emergence of new resource frontiers and the monetization of novel entities such as human tissues, wildlife, and ecosystem services.
• Historical contexts highlight how resources have shaped global political-economic systems through colonialism, slavery, and imperial trade, fostering uneven development and structural inequalities.
• Indigenous displacement and exploitation feature prominently in histories of resource extraction for settler colonialism and imperial expansion.
• Contemporary critical resource geography reflects on academic knowledge production, its political implications, and its impacts on different communities.
• It seeks to challenge and change institutionalized norms that may perpetuate inequities in how knowledge about resources is generated, validated, and applied.
• The Handbook advocates for a reflexive and speculative approach to studying resources, acknowledging the complexities of socioecological systems and their entanglements with human societies.
• It emphasizes the need for ongoing critical reflection on the social and environmental impacts of resource extraction and management.
• The volume aims to offer diverse analytical tools and perspectives for understanding and addressing socioecological inequities associated with resource exploitation.

Situating the critical in critical resource geography

• Critical resource geography examines how things are transformed into resources and the societal implications of their use.
• Three central questions guide this field:
  • How do resources contribute to the material organization of human societies?
  • How are resources conceptualized and made meaningful in societal contexts?
  • What alternative socioecological futures are possible with or without traditional notions of resources?
• Dictionary definitions of “resource” in publications like the Oxford English Dictionary reflect dominant, Anglo-centric perspectives that depict resources as static entities available for human use.
• These definitions reinforce common-sense understandings that natural resources are pre-existing materials or phenomena with intrinsic value.
• The concept of “natural resources” places value on materials like gold, natural gas, and water based on their utility and potential for economic enrichment.
• Mainstream theories often link economic development and resource abundance, but critical scholarship challenges these assumptions.
• The “resource curse” theory highlights cases where resource wealth leads to environmental degradation, social inequalities, and economic instability.
• Critical resource studies aim to deconstruct and challenge hegemonic ideas about resources, revealing their social construction and the power dynamics involved in their exploitation.
• Scholars analyze how resource-making processes contribute to socio-political dynamics, including governance structures and economic systems.
• They explore the co-constitution of resources and societies, critiquing deterministic views of resource abundance and development.
• This scholarship emphasizes the importance of recognizing diverse perspectives and histories in understanding resource exploitation and its impacts.
• By examining tensions between dominant and subaltern perspectives on resources, critical scholars seek to contribute to more equitable socioenvironmental futures.
• The concept of “resource-making” focuses on practices that render parts of the world exploitable as resources, influenced by politics and ideologies.
• “World-making” refers to how socioecological worlds are shaped through resource extraction, circulation, consumption, and disposal.
• Critical resource geography integrates these concepts dialectically to challenge fixed notions of resources and explore alternative resource ontologies.
• It advocates for ontological pluralism, suggesting that the concept of resources is not universal and should be open to diverse interpretations and uses.
• This approach aims to unsettle conventional understandings of resources and their roles in societal organization and development.

(Un)knowing the World of Resources

• Critical-geographical studies of resources emphasize a relational analytic.
• This approach challenges positivist science by integrating material conditions and social constructs.
• Erich Zimmermann’s idea that “Resources are not, they become” underscores the dynamic and socially constructed nature of resources.
• Resources emerge through complex material and ideational processes shaped by social utility and value.
• The concept of “resource assemblages” highlights how resources are constructed and stabilized through intentional human efforts.
• Assemblage thinking in geography emphasizes the multiplicity and provisional nature of resource formations.
• Materiality in resource geography explores how physical and cultural dimensions intersect to shape the “World of Resources.”
• Acknowledging materiality complicates notions of agency and challenges commodity and environmental determinisms.
• Resource-making processes are deeply entangled with state-making efforts, influencing socioecological relations and governance.
• State sovereignty over resources often involves scientific, political, and regulatory practices that shape resource access and control.
• Resource scholarship critiques colonial and capitalist dynamics that underpin resource extraction, often involving exclusion and violence.
• Vandana Shiva’s analysis highlights shifts in the meaning of “resource,” linking it to historical political-economic transformations and dispossession.
• Critical resource geography questions common-sense understandings of resources while acknowledging their foundational role in contemporary life.
• Marxist critiques underscore capitalism’s exploitative nature and its impact on natural resources and labor.
• Understanding the “World of Resources” necessitates grappling with its implications for equity, social justice, and environmental sustainability.

Unbounding the World of Resources

• Calls into question the fixed nature of resources historically and geographically.
• Advocates for ontological pluralism to challenge the idea of a singular, universal world.
• Rooted in overcoming extractive colonialism by elevating diverse ways of knowing.
• Seeks to “unbound” the World of Resources by provincializing capitalist histories and geographies.
• Critiques the One-World World (OWW) concept as imperialist for negating other knowledges.
• Proposes two moves: critiquing historical geographies of resources and speculative transformation.
• Highlights the Zapatista movement’s critique of capitalist systems and alternative institutionality.
• Discusses the “Land Back” movement reclaiming Indigenous land and knowledge.
• Emphasizes the role of Indigenous, feminist, and post-humanist scholarship in challenging resource ontologies.
• Academic studies advocate for unbounding resource systems to counter dominant global environmental narratives.
• Questions the usefulness of the concept of “resources” in critical resource geography.
• Advocates for making familiar forms strange to envision worlds where current resource systems are unacceptable.

What is in this Handbook?

• Handbook introduces diverse scholarship in resource geography, focusing on tensions and debates within the field.
• Sections outlined:
  • Section I: “(Un)Knowing Resources”
    • Emphasizes destabilizing common understandings of resources.
    • Draws on diverse methodologies (materiality, feminist approaches, Indigenous epistemologies).
    • Authors challenge the ontological status of resources and the ways we come to know them.
  • Section II: “(Un)Knowing Resource Systems”
    • Examines components and logics of resource systems.
    • Highlights systemic compulsions and their relationships to dominant ideologies (capitalism, nationalism).
    • Analyzes agency and power dynamics in resource-making processes.
  • Section III: “Doing Critical Resource Geography: Methods, Advocacy, and Teaching”
    • Reflects on scholarly engagement in resource geography.
    • Explores ethical dimensions of knowledge production.
    • Discusses institutional relationships and political commitments of scholars.
    • Includes chapters on teaching critical perspectives in classrooms and field settings.
  • Section IV: “Resource-Making/World-Making”
    • Analyzes case studies of resource-making across historical and geographical contexts.
    • Examines co-constitution of resources with broader dimensions like citizenship, colonialism, and identity.
    • Considers future possibilities through the lens of historical contingency and remaking of resources.