Our Call for Participation for the 2022-2023 Post/Extractivism Working Group takes place in the context of (among other things) the persistence of the Covid-19 pandemic, rising geopolitical tensions, overlapping and compounding climate crises, and all of the ecological and human inequalities these have exposed and amplified. All of these processes intensify pressures to increase the extraction of natural resource, as communities across the globe seek ways to restart their economies and livelihoods, secure supply chains, and access the resources necessary for decarbonization and energy transitions. Despite mounting awareness of the consequences of extraction as a process and extractivism as an ideology of development on human health, ecological dynamics across space and time, pressures on the planet continue to grow.

After a very successful inaugural series focused on extraction in the Americas, the post/extractivisms working group is excited to announce our second series for 2022-2023 with an expanded, global, scope. Our aim is to gather early career and established scholars, activists, and others working in and around the evolving role of resource extraction in the preset conjuncture and its historical antecedents. We will hold meetings virtually once per month to discuss pre-circulated draft papers, book chapters, and excerpts of manuscripts – one paper per meeting. The working group may grow into something else – edited works, conference panels, co-authored interventions, or other less conventional collective endeavors. Our primary goal is to create a community to discuss papers in progress, and to collectively read, think, and learn together.

Topics may include but are not limited to:

• Extraction’s Spatial and Temporal Expressions
• Mobilization against extraction
• Accountability and transparency in extractive industries
• Transition minerals
• Development (and critiques of development)
• Energy and energy transitions
• Agribusiness
• Decolonization
• ‘Neo’ or Progressive Extractivism
• Environmental racism
• Gendered Dimensions of Extractivism
• Literatures of extraction
• Geopolitics/Energopolitics
• Extractivism as ideology
• Capitalism, Extraction, and labour
• Artisanal and industrial mining
• Ethnographies 

Initial timeline:

July 22: Deadline for Paper Proposals

August 1: Circulation of Invitations for Selected Papers

August 23: Hybrid Kick-off Meeting, Announcement of Schedule for Presentations (in conjunction with the 2022 Canadian Association of Latin American and Caribbean Studies Annual Meeting)

September 2022-August 2023: Workshop Meetings (specific dates and times tbd)
 

Submission of a brief title, abstract (150 words), and biography should be sent to Donald Kingsbury (donald.kingsbury@utoronto.ca) by July 22, 2022.

About the conveners:

Daniel Tubb is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Brunswick and author of Shifting Livelihoods: Gold Mining and Subsistence in the Chocó, Colombia. Daniel has ongoing research on oil palm plantations, agrarian change, and the impacts of war on nature in Colombia, and on the impacts of resource projects in their early phase in Canada.

Donald Kingsbury is an Assistant Professor (teaching stream) in Political Science and Latin American Studies at the University of Toronto. He is co-author, most recently, of Populist Moments and Extractivist States in Venezuela and Ecuador: The People’s Oil?. Don’s current research focuses on the intersection of resource extraction and decarbonizing energy transitions, with a focus on lithium mining in South America and Canada.