One of the first books (in English) on this topic. Author is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese and is therefore able to bring existing work in these languages into the academic conversation in English. Presents new empirical data from author's fieldwork. The interest in 'extractivism' is increasing across many disciplines (e.g. IPE, trade relationships, anthropology, political ecology etc.).

The looming depletion of non-renewable resources has increased the global land grab in the past decade. So far however, the question of how and when people can influence economic outcomes has received little attention in the study of social movements. Based on in-depth ethnographic field research since 2003 in the industrial forestry expansion frontiers in Brazil and elsewhere in the global South, this book presents a novel theory to explain how the interaction between resistance, companies and the state determines investment outcomes. The promotion of contentious agency by organizing and politicizing, campaigning, protesting, networking and engaging in state and corporate-remediated politics whilst maintaining autonomy is central to explaining how impacted people influence resource flows, and block or slow projects they deem harmful to their livelihoods and the environment. The conflicts between globalizing paper and pulp corporations and the landless peasants, indigenous communities and other parties with alternative projects for the planet's future are studied to illustrate how a great transformation can be built upon progressive counter-movements. This systematic comparison of several cases illustrates the broader principles and problems endemic to the global political economy. Contentious Agency and Natural Resource Politics will be of strong interest to students and scholars of international relations, international political economy, environmental studies, environmental politics, sociology and social movement studies.

The looming depletion of non-renewable resources has increased the global land grab in the past decade. So far however, the question of how and when people can influence economic outcomes has received little attention in the study of social movements. Based on in-depth ethnographic field research since 2003 in the industrial forestry expansion frontiers in Brazil and elsewhere in the global South, this book presents a novel theory to explain how the interaction between resistance, companies and the state determines investment outcomes. The promotion of contentious agency by organizing and politicizing, campaigning, protesting, networking and engaging in state and corporate-remediated politics whilst maintaining autonomy is central to explaining how impacted people influence resource flows, and block or slow projects they deem harmful to their livelihoods and the environment. The conflicts between globalizing paper and pulp corporations and the landless peasants, indigenous communities and other parties with alternative projects for the planet's future are studied to illustrate how a great transformation can be built upon progressive counter-movements. This systematic comparison of several cases illustrates the broader principles and problems endemic to the global political economy. Contentious Agency and Natural Resource Politics will be of strong interest to students and scholars of international relations, international political economy, environmental studies, environmental politics, sociology and social movement studies.

Studying Complex Interactions and Outcomes Through Qualitative Comparative Analysis: A Practical Guide to Comparative Case Studies and Ethnographic Data Analysis offers practical, methodological, and theoretically robust guidelines to systematically study the causalities, dynamics, and outcomes of complex social interactions in multiple source data sets. It demonstrates how to convert data from multisited ethnography of investment politics, mobilizations, and citizen struggles into a Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). In this book, Markus Kroeger focuses on how data collected primarily via multisited political ethnography, supplemented by other materials and verified by multiple forms of triangulation, can be systematically analyzed through QCA. The results of this QCA offer insight on how to study the political and economic outcomes in natural resource conflicts, across different contexts and political systems. This book applies the method in practice using examples from the author's own research. With a focus on social movement studies, it shows how QCA can be used to analyze a multiple data source database, that includes results from multiple case studies. This book is a practical guide for researchers and students in social movement studies and other disciplines that produce ethnographic data from multiple sources on how to analyze complex databases through the QCA.