1st Edition

ExtrACTION Impacts, Engagements, and Alternative Futures

    266 Pages 20 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    266 Pages 20 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    This timely volume examines resistance to natural resource extraction from a critical ethnographic perspective. Using a range of case studies from North, Central and South America, Australia, and Central Asia, the contributors explore how and why resistance movements seek to change extraction policies, evaluating their similarities, differences, successes and failures. A range of ongoing debates concerning environmental justice, risk and disaster, sacrifice zones, and the economic cycles of boom and bust are considered, and the roles of governments, free markets and civil society groups re-examined.

    Incorporating contributions from authors in the fields of anthropology, public policy, environmental health, and community-based advocacy, ExtrACTION offers a robustly argued case for change. It will make engaging reading for academics and students in the fields of critical anthropology, public policy, and politics, as well as activists and other interested citizens.

    Introduction: Confronting Extraction, Taking Action  1. The Great Crew Change? Structuring Work in the Oilfield  2. Mega-mining Sovereignty: Landscapes of Power and Protest in Uruguay’s New Extractivist Frontier  3. Marcellus Shale as Golden Goose: The Discourse of Development and the Marginalization of Resistance in Northcentral Pennsylvania  4. Bounded Impacts, Boundless Promise: Environmental Impact Assessments of Oil Production in the Ecuadorian Amazon  5. The Power and Politics of Health Impact Assessment in the Pacific Northwest Coal Export Debate  6. Contingent Legal Futures: Does the Ability to Exercise Aboriginal Rights and Title Turn on the Price of Gold?  7. Corexit to Forget It: Transforming Coastal Louisiana into an Energy Sacrifice Zone  8. With or Without Railway? Post-catastrophe Perceptions of Risk and Development in Lac-Mégantic, Quebec  9. Bringing Country Back? Indigenous Aspirations and Ecological Values in Australian Mine-Site Rehabilitation  10. Harmonizing Grassroots Organizing and Legal Advocacy to Address Coal Mining and Shale Gas Drilling Issues in Southwestern Pennsylvania  11. Images of Harm, Imagining Justice: Gold Mining Contestation in Kyrgyzstan  12. El Salvador’s Challenge to the Latin American Extractive Imperative  13. Unconventional Action and Community Control: Rerouting Dependencies Despite the Hydrocarbon Economy  14 .Toward Transition? Challenging Extractivism and the Politics of the Inevitable on the Navajo Nation  Afterword: An Open letter to extrACTIVISTs

    Biography

    Kirk Jalbert is Manager of Community-Based Research & Engagement at the FracTracker Alliance and Visiting Research Professor in the Drexel University Center for Science, Technology and Society. His work explores public participation in environmental science and policy.
     
    Anna Willow is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the Ohio State University. Her research spans indigenous activism and cultural responses to extraction.
     
    David Casagrande is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Lehigh University, USA. His expertise is in cognition, information ecology, and policy analysis of environmental issues.
     
    Stephanie Paladino is with the Center for Applied Social Research, University of Oklahoma. Her research focuses on the interactions among environmental governance, equity, and sustainability.