Presenting a broad range of case studies, this book explores rural social movements contesting natural resource development initiatives.
Natural resource development takes multiple forms, including infrastructure corridors, mines, dams, resource processing plants and pipelines. Many of which are driven by economic valuations, whilst social and environmental effects are given limited consideration. In this volume the authors discuss the emergence, process and outcomes of social movements with respect to these natural resource development projects, including examples of confrontation seeking to either block developments or promote alternative development approaches, such as agritourism. The examples taken from Africa, Asia, North America, Europe and Latin America demonstrate the diversity of struggles stimulated by natural resource development, including both immediate and longer-term effects, repertoires of action, political and cultural work. Taken together the case studies provide a rich overview of current movements engaged in resisting the neoliberal agenda of global resource exploitation.
This book will be key reading for scholars interested in social movements, natural resource development, environmental policy and development studies. It will also be of interest to activists engaged in mobilizations stimulated by natural resource development projects.
"1. Introduction: Social movements and natural resources 2. Peasant collective action against disembedding land: The case of Niassa Province, Mozambique 3. Negotiating pipeline projects and reterritorializing land through rural resistance in northern Kenya 4. Confronting neoliberal resource policy: Mining conflict and coal politics in Bangladesh 5. Local struggles for the coproduction of natural capital: Payment for forest environmental services in central Vietnam 6. Beyond the swans: cellulose extraction, social mobilization, and environmental transformations in southern Chile 7. ""No Oil in Our Soil!"": Shifting Narratives from Commodities to the Commons in Iowa, USA 8. Discursive framing and community mobilization: Stopping the Melancthon Mega Quarry in Ontario, Canada 9. Rural protests and the mining industry in Finland 10. Agritourism in Poland: A new social movement"
John F. Devlin is Associate Professor, School of Environmental Design and Rural Development, University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada
