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I wish to consider how industries exploiting natural resources may be expected to develop. It is not my purpose to consider their entire relation with the economy of which they form a part. Rather, I wish to examine the logic of their own changes in technology and technique in response to stimuli from the rest of the economy. In tracing this development, I shall stress the changing technology itself; the adjustment of property and tenure concepts; some aspects of location and transportation; and the impact of all these changes on industrial and market organization.As an analytical technique for tracing these changes, I shall make use of a "stages of development" approach. It will be shown that most industries working natural resources may be said to be in one of three, roughly consecutive stages. The precise dating of the transitions between the stages is highly arbitrary, but this defect is unimportant since the chief function of the stages approach in its present context is to bring out the successive impacts on resource exploitation of two outside forces. The first of these is a mechanical, capital-using technology. The second is the application of science to "control" the resource, biological or mineral, in the same sense that agricultural and manufacturing industries have control over their processes.In the model, stress is laid on the industries that today are still extracting raw materials from nature: fishing, hunting, logging, oil and gas, metals, and water. Agricultural activity also properly belongs with these industries. However, since agriculture has already passed well into the third stage, it is referred to chiefly for purposes of example and comparison. The farmer no longer "hunts" his cattle, nor "collects" wild rice or fruit.

This article describes the fight of transnational civic networks to influence business development strategies and counter the threats to environmental and labor rights posed by the construction and exploitation of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) oil pipeline in Transcaucasia. The article starts by discussing the role of civil society in the global struggle for sustainable development. Then a brief overview of the geopolitical significance of the Transcaucasian-Caspian region in today's oil and gas markets is presented. The case study looks at how the actions of international and domestic nongovernmental organizations influenced the BTC's main shareholder and operator company, British Petroleum, as well as host countries' governments, to switch to more environmentally cognizant and socially responsive practices. The article discusses internationalization of civil society networks in response to the looming environmental crisis in the region, using the BTC case as an illustration. The article concludes by generalizing from this particular case study to the broader issue of transnational civic activism as a risk-mitigating factor in the world dominated by industry-related threats presented by globalization of the extractive technologies.

The dominant scholarly approach to the analysis of nationalization of foreign extractive industries in Third World countries employs game theory or bargaining models. A commonly used framework in bargaining theory is the so-called "bilateral monopoly model," which posits the existence of two "non-colluding" parties—that is, the foreign investor and a government—each of whom has singular, noncontradictory objectives. The relationship is described in terms of a "balance of power" between the host country and the foreign investor based on the problem of joint-maximization. Each party has what the other needs to maximize their mutual benefits. The foreign investor has capital, organizational resources, expertise, international access to export markets, and marketing ability while the host government has control of natural resources such as ore and crude oil as well as the labor force, and control over taxation, the trade and foreign exchange regime, and other law and regulation.

AbstractWe examine the spread and persistence of corporate social responsibility (CSR) to mitigate oil conflict, despite its failures. Our work challenges the ideas versus interests debate, arguing for a third way in which reinforcing feedbacks between ideas (problem narratives) and interests (power disconnects) interact to shape the persistence of failed CSR. Using Ogoniland, Nigeria, as a case study, we present novel findings showing that Shell and the Nigerian government developed problem narratives for CSR that reinforces rather than narrows existing power disconnects. In contrast, as those most negatively affected by oil extraction, the Ogoni people have a more complex understanding of the problems associated with extraction and the necessary solutions. Therefore, they are disappointed with failed CSR applications practiced by Shell since 1997 and continue to protest ongoing impacts of oil extraction. Oil companies need to change their problem narratives and concede more power to communities, and governments should cease enabling failed CSR strategies. Additionally, governments should reflect on and address the role they play in enabling CSR as a failed strategy, whether they are oil-producing host countries such as Nigeria or oil-consuming home countries such as Holland. Last, we discuss the generalizability of our theoretical framework and propose that the international community could play a role in narrowing domestic power disconnects.

Racial tensions and predatory extractive policies, ingrained since the colonial era, have intensified as a major new oil discovery raises the stakes of political combat.

Conflicts between local communities and their governments over natural resource development are not new in Latin America. When mining and oil companies move in, communities have blocked roads, staged protests, and undertaken other forms of direct action. More recently, however, communities have expanded their tactics, turning toward the state and its participatory institutions to contest claims over their land. This article investigates this trend and the conditions that facilitate it by analyzing an original database of 102 attempts by communities in Colombia to implement one participatory institution—the popular consultation—to challenge large scale extractive projects. I argue that communities' ability to contest extractive projects by leveraging participatory institutions depends on the balance of power between two external players—private firms and expert allies.