The Dictionary of Human Geography

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famously described in 1977, for example, as

‘little more than the meeting place for repre-

sentatives of disunited states’ (Seton-Watson,

1977). It is scarcely surprising, therefore,

that today, while we have by no means arrived

at the end of the nation-state, as business-class

globalists advertise (e.g. Ohmae, 1995), we

are seeing nation and state being pulled

apart in the context of recent rounds of

globalization.

Macro forms of state-making are increasingly

becoming transnational in their scale of organ-

ization in concert with the entrenchment of

neo-liberalismas the dominant free-market

model of governance (Peet, 2003; Harvey,

2005). Meanwhile, micro models of neo-liberal

governmentalitythat promote entrepreneur-

ial forms ofsubjectivityand benchmarking

approaches to place-making come together in

context-contingent ways with global market

forces to create newassemblagesofidentity,

affiliation andcitizenshipthat are no longer so

clearly bound-up in the nation-state (Mitchell,

2004a; Ong and Collier, 2005). If the nation-

state is not dead, it is clear that it is being

remade in different ways in different places by

both roll-out and roll-back forms of neo-liber-

alism; it is becoming redefined as the managed

mediator of neo-liberalhegemony(Peck and

Tickell, 2002): on the one hand, a relentless

enforcer of free trade rules and neo-liberal

governancein arenas ranging from land man-

agement to regional development to workfare to

the warfare of the coalition of the billing; and,

on the other hand, a bulwark of the status quo

and an excuse for business as usual when

non-neo-liberal visions of development, debt

relief, women’s rights and environmental

protection are proposed at transnational and

subnational scales (Public Citizen, 2007).

Meanwhile, social relations and identifications

are themselves also becoming remade and

re-territorialized by the globalizing forces. The

acceleratedflowsof tourists, migrants, money,

information, movies, sports and news pro-

grammes are challenging the old printmediaof

national consciousness, and turning the hyphen

in nation-state into more of an index of disjunc-

ture (Appadurai, 1996). All these changes have

not (notwithstanding Hardt and Negri, 2000)

led to the complete eclipse of the nation-state by

a new global empire, but they have led to the

withering of the national state as an institutional

enabler of nationaldemocracy, and they have

therefore made the search for new transnational

convergence spaces for of democracy all the

more urgent (Routledge, 2003: see alsotrans-

nationalism). ms

natural resources Conventionally, this term

refers to biophysical materials that satisfy

human wants and provide direct inputs to

human well-being. The term may, however,

be defined more broadly to include any com-

ponent of the non-human world that performs

a socially valuable function. Natural resources

are the product of geological, hydrological and

biological processes: the adjective ‘natural’

denotes this locationanteriorto human labour.

It is for this reason that classicalpolitical

economydescribed as ‘gifts ofnature’ the

raw materials and productive energies of the

non-human world.

A distinctive vocabulary is available for dif-

ferentiating the qualities and properties of a

vast range of natural resources. A primary dis-

tinction is between exhaustible (stock) and

renewable (flow) resources, based on the

potential of different biophysical materials to

regenerate (see figure). For stock resources, a

secondary distinction is between materials that

are consumed by use and cannot be recovered

(such as fuels) and those that may be recycled

(most applications of metals). Flow resources

may be subdivided according to whether use

of the resource subtracts from the amount

and/or quality of the resource base: for so-

called ambient resources, use of the resource

degrades neither the amount nor quality (e.g.

solar radiation, wind, waves). For other flow

resources, there is a threshold beyond which

further consumption exceeds the capacity of

the resource to regenerate: these ‘critical zone’

resources can be ‘mined’ to depletion/extinc-

tion (e.g. ground water, fish, game species).

Basic distinctions such as these have under-

pinned the development of differentmodelsfor

managing renewable and non-renewable re-

sources (seeresource management). Recent

developments in the biological sciences and

the so-called ‘newecology’, however, have

thrown into question many of the assumptions

that underlie these models, and have drawn

attention to the non-linear behaviour of many

ecological systems and their capacity for

‘surprise’ (Botkin, 1990). At the same time,

environmental economics has re-framed

many of the questions surrounding natural

resources in terms of the management of

‘ecological capital,’ a new vocabulary that

facilitates the commensurability of the non-

human world.

From both an historical and a philosophical

perspective, ‘natural resources’ are a significant

misnomer. First, the practices ofexploration,

surveying,measurementand experimentation

by which natural resources come to be known

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_N Final Proof page 490 31.3.2009 3:13pm Compositor Name: ARaju

NATURAL RESOURCES