To mark PPE@10 this feature continues a series of posts to celebrate ten years of Progress in Political Economy (PPE) as a blog that has addressed the worldliness of critical political economy issues since 2014.
I have always been fascinated by the place of mining in capitalist development. Growing up West Australian in the 2000s, I witnessed first-hand the incredible wealth generated next to the inequality, violence and environmental devastation of the last mining boom. I soon came to understand that studying mining sharpens our focus on a bigger tension at the heart of global capitalism – the ever-present tension between modernisation and destruction mediated by social conflict and resistance.
Supporters and detractors of mining both recognise the rapid economic, social and political change that mining brings can completely transform societies. If this is true in Australia, it is certainly so in Indonesia, where the research for my new book Undermining Resistance: The governance of participation by multinational mining corporations took place.
My research for the book was motivated by a simple question: How can people affected by mining shift the uneven distribution of impacts and benefits?