Rural geography I: Resource peripheries and the creation of new global commodity chains

Abstract

This report focuses on the now substantial international rural geography literature on the emergence of so-called 'resource peripheries', linked to the economic expansion of rapidly industrializing nations such as India and China. The report outlines the major foci and key arguments of this body of work, noting its connections to, but also elaborations of, important concepts used within rural geography, including global commodity chains and their multi-scalar governance, involving, in part, political, economic and social relations between corporations and local communities. Noting the influence of numerous Marxian concepts in this body of work's intellectual development, the report draws further potential links with the 'dis/articulations' scholarship that has recently emerged out of a critique of the global commodity/value chain research, including notions of dispossession, disempowerment and primitive accumulation. Relatedly, aspects of multi-scalar and multi-sector governance in natural resource extraction are highlighted.