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  2. Iron Will: Global Extractivism and Mining Resistance in Brazil and India

Iron Will: Global Extractivism and Mining Resistance in Brazil and India

Markus Kröger 2020 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license Open access edition funded by the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki
Open Access Open Access
Iron Will lays bare the role of extractivist policies and efforts to resist these policies through a deep ethnographic exploration of globally important iron ore mining in Brazil and India. Markus Kröger addresses resistance strategies to extractivism and tracks their success, or lack thereof, through a comparison of peaceful and armed resource conflicts, explaining how different means of resistance arise. Using the distinctly different contexts and political systems of Brazil and India highlights the importance of local context for resistance. For example, if there is an armed conflict at a planned mining site, how does this influence the possibility to use peaceful resistance strategies? To answer such questions, Kröger assesses the inter-relations of contentious, electoral, institutional, judicial, and private politics that surround conflicts and interactions, offering a new theoretical framework of "investment politics" that can be applied generally by scholars and students of social movements, environmental studies, and political economy, and even more broadly in Social Scientific and Environmental Policy research.

By drawing on a detailed field research and other sources, this book explains precisely which resistance strategies are able to influence both political and economic outcomes. Kröger expands the focus of traditionally Latin American extractivism research to other contexts such as India and the growing extractivist movement in the Global North. In addition, as the book is a multi-sited political ethnography, it will appeal to sociologists, political scientists, anthropologists, geographers, and others using field research among other methods to understand globalization and global political interactions. It is the most comprehensive book on the political economy and ecology of iron ore and steel. This is astonishing, given the fact that iron ore is the second-most important commodity in the world after oil.

 

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ISBN(s)
  • 978-0-472-90239-2 (open access)
  • 978-0-472-13212-6 (hardcover)
Subject
  • Political Science:International Relations
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  • Table of Contents

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  • Cover
  • Title Page
  • Copyright Page
  • Dedication
  • Contents
  • Preface
  • Acknowledgments
  • Introduction
  • Part I. Theorizing the Impacts of Resistance to Extractivism
    • Chapter 1. Resistance and Investment Outcomes
    • Chapter 2. Theory of Investment Politics and Spatial Changes
  • Part II. Political Dynamics and Contexts
    • Chapter 3. Nonarmed Resistance
    • Chapter 4. Armed Conflicts
  • Part III. Peaceful Resistance Strategies
    • Chapter 5. Protesting by Mass Social Movements
    • Chapter 6. Using a Broad Set of Strategies
    • Chapter 7. Global and National Coalitions
    • Conclusion: Resisting the Global Political Economy of Extractivism
  • Epilogue
  • Methodological Appendix
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
  • Index

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Black and white map showing an outline of India divided into labeled states. There are varying size outlines of the mining and project areas.

Iron ore mining project areas in India, 2005-2015

From Introduction

Map 1. India’s iron mining areas and projects. The size of the circles on the map represents the approximate extensions of the mining case areas.

Black and white map showing an outline of Brazil divided into labeled states. There are varying size outlines of the mining conflict areas.

Major iron ore conflicts in Brazil, 2005-2015 

From Introduction

Map 2. Major iron mining conflicts in Brazil that are part of the data used in this book. The size of the mining areas is estimated based on my fieldwork between 2005 and 2015.

Figure 1 is a black and white, multipart diagram that illustrates how different outcomes for investment projects can be reached through different political game scenarios.

Investment project outcomes as a result of political games

From Chapter 2

Fig. 1. Different political actors and games through whose interactions the outcomes of investment politics are determined. Corporate, state, government, and resistance agencies of different types can try to influence economic and political outcomes either directly via specific strategies, or indirectly through state-mediated or private politics, or, in some cases, through armed conflicts.

Figure 2 is a black and white diagram with five levels that a resistance movement can embed with the state. The bottom level is the least embedded and the top is the most embedded.

Steps of state co-production by resistance

From Chapter 2

Fig. 2. There are different levels of embeddedness a resistance can achieve with governmental or institutional actors. A resistance effort can build its embeddedness in steps to achieve the ultimate goal of influencing outcomes through the production or coproduction of the state.

Figure 3 is a black and white diagram with three circles arranged in an upside-down triangle. Double-headed arrows between each circles show free movement between all circles.

Causality of changes in phyical, social, and symbolic spaces

From Chapter 2

Fig. 3. A theory of physical, social, and symbolic spaces as interrelated and internally distinguished loci for changing power relations and differentiating and positioning of social actors. Resisting extractivism in all these spaces and through all these mechanisms is likely to lead to better outcomes for the resistance.

Map 3 is a black and white map of a portion of southeastern Brazil. The map shows the mining sites, pipelines, and railroads that run between the mining areas and the ports.

Southeast network iron ore export in Brazil

From Chapter 3

Map 3. Iron ore export logistics from Minas Gerais state to the ports in southeastern Brazil.

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