4: Resources

Question 1

Oil shale vs. tar sands

Answer 1

Oil shale:
2013 Shell closed Mahogany oil shale project
Perhaps due to recalcitrance of the material making production futile

Tar sands:
A global oil resource since 2002
Has distinct properties and impacts, which effect ecological systems, infrastructure, and teh carbon economy

The ‘resourceness’ of both is controversial and contested

Question 2

Ontological politics [?;?]

Answer 2

Mol 1999
How do multiple ontologies compete?
If realities can be made differently, which one should we choose?
Several ways of knowing/making a resource

Question 3

Land [?;?]

Answer 3

Li 2014
An assemblage - of materialities, technologies, discourses
Statistical picturing devices make it thinkable as a resource
Land grab 2008+
Never fully commodified because that would mean complete exclusion but it sustains human life

Question 4

Resource geographies and materiality {?&?;?]

Answer 4

Bakker and Bridge 2006
Bio and geo both constrain and enable resource production
There isn’t a universal materiality, it’s historically contingent
Social production and construction risk nat/soc binary
Work on materiality can help - e.g. social production - nature confounds its production

Question 5

Tracing economic geography [?;?]

Answer 5

Bridge 2011
modern= nature as unproblematic object / stage for economy
contemporary = nature as social product
recent = recovery of generative and productive capacities of nonhuman world
= ‘socionatures’

Question 6

Socionatures

Answer 6

Relational, dynamic

Hybrid; historically and geographically contingent; becoming and can unbecome a resource