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which modern geography is founded
(seehybridity).
(2) Resources as relational. Recent work
by geographers starts from the premise
that resources can be more productively
analysed as a set of social relations be-
tween (often distant) groups rather than
as discrete ‘things’. This so-called ‘rela-
tional approach’ works against the reifi-
cation of resources by turning the
analytical lens back on to society: What
is it about the needs and wants of a soci-
ety, and the way a society is organized,
that transforms a component of the
non-human world into a resource in
a particular time and place? (See also
commodity.)
At its most general, a relational
approach de-naturalizes resources: it
draws attention to how what counts as a
resource is at least as much a matter of
social, political and economic conditions
as it is any intrinsic or inherent proper-
ties. More specifically, relational thinking
about resources can provide a potent
critique of popular assumptions that
scarcity is an external physical condition
setting the bounds of human possibility
(Harvey, 1974a). In the face of neo-
Malthusian claims about food, energy
and other material shortages (seemal-
thusian model), thinking about the
social relations that define a resource
highlights how access and availability
are mediated by wealth and power: sim-
ply put, the rich and powerful do not
starve. This insistence on the limits to
resource availability being largely
(although not exclusively) internal to
theeconomycan be politically empow-
ering, as it suggests how apparent short-
ages might be resolved not by increasing
supply, but by changing the way in which
resources are allocated within society, the
uses to which they are put, and cultural
expectations about the costs of use.
(3) Resources: fighting words. Resources have
long been recognized as objects of geo-
political struggle and intrigue: control
ofwaterandoil, for example, are fre-
quently tipped to be the battlegrounds of
the twenty-first century (Klare, 2002: see
conflict commodities; resource wars).
However, many of the most intractable
contemporary political tensions surround-
ingresourcesarenotstrugglesovera stable
category, and it is the very definition oflandsas resourcesthat is at stake. Thus
recent work considers the cultural, eco-
nomic and political processes by which
parts of the non-human world are ‘coaxed
and coerced’ from settings where they
already may be valued in quite different
ways (Tsing, 2004). While chimpanzees
(laboratoryexperimentation), exposed
uplands (wind power sites) and tropical
agro-diversity (genetic diversity) are strik-
ingly heterogeneous, what they share in
common is that their statusas resources
(noted in parentheses) is achieved only in
the face of opposition and resistance.
The apparent objectivity and universality
of the ‘resource imaginary’ disguises its
particularity and the silencing of alterna-
tive conceptualizations of the non-human
world. For example, to describe bauxite
as a resource overlooks the pre-existing
land uses and land ownership that
must be undone to establish mines and
realize the exchange value of the
ore (Howitt, 2001b). It is for this reason
that a number of authors refer to the ‘vio-
lence’ of the resource imaginary, thereby
placing resources at the centre of human
geography’s encounter with post-
colonialism (Braun, 1997; Peluso
and Watts, 2001). gbSuggested reading
Bakker and Bridge (2006); Emel, Bridge and
Krueger (2002); Rees (1991); Shiva (1992).resource economics A practical art and field
of study that understandsnatural resources
as a particular class of the ‘scarce goods’
described byneo-classical economics, and
that seeks to understand the opportunities
and limitations of usingmarketsas the primary
social mechanism for making collective
decisions about their production, allocation
andconsumption. Although recognizing that
resource availability is finite in an absolute
physical sense, a core axiom of resource eco-
nomics is that any meaningful measure of a
resource’s availability must understand its
relation tocapital, labour and socio-technical
knowledge – relations that can be expressed by
reference to price (Barnett and Morse, 1963).
A normative goal of resource economics is to
improve utility maximization by attributing
prices to environmental goods and services.gbSuggested reading
Tietenberg (2005).Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_R-new Final Proof page 649 2.4.2009 9:12pmRESOURCE ECONOMICS