In a fast-changing world, where the extraction of natural resources is key to development, whilst also creating environmental and social disasters, understanding how landscapes, people and politics are shaped by extraction is crucial.Looking at resource extraction in numerous locations at different stages of development, including North, West and South Africa, India, Kazakhstan and Australia, a broad picture is created, covering coal, natural-gas, gold and cement mining, from corporate to 'artisanal' extraction, from the large to the small scale. The chapters answer the questions: What is ideological about resource extraction? How does extraction transform the physical landscape? And how does the extractive process determine which stakeholders become dominant or marginalised?Contributing to policy debates, Mining Encounters uncovers the tensions, negotiations and disparities between different actors in the extractive industries, including exploiters and those who benefit or are impoverished by resource exploitation.

Breaking new ground in the study of European colonialism, this book focuses on a nation historically positioned between the Western and Eastern Empires of Europe – Finland. Although Finland never had overseas colonies, the authors argue that the country was undeniably involved in the colonial world, with Finns adopting ideologies and identities that cannot easily be disentangled from colonialism. This book explores the concepts of ‘colonial complicity’ and ‘colonialism without colonies’ in relation to Finland, a nation that was oppressed, but also itself complicit in colonialism. It offers insights into European colonialism on the margins of the continent and within a nation that has traditionally declared its innocence and exceptionalism. The book shows that Finns were active participants in various colonial contexts, including Southern Africa and Sápmi in the North. Demonstrating that colonialism was a common practice shared by all European nations, with or without formal colonies, this book provides essential reading for anyone interested in European colonial history. Chapters 1, 7 and 8 are available open access under a via link.springer.com.>

The multiplicity of tourism encounters provide some of the best available occasions to observe the social world and its making(s). Focusing on ontological politics of tourism development, this book examines how different versions of tourism are enacted, how encounters between different versions of tourism orderings may result in controversies, but also on how these enactments and encounters are entangled in multiple ways to broader areas of development, conservation, policy and destination management. Throughout the book, encounters and controversies are investigated from a poststructuralist and relational approach as complex and emerging, seeing the roles and characteristics of related actors as co-constituted. Inspired by post-actor-network theory and related research, the studies include the social as well as the material, but also multiplicity and ontological politics when examining controversial matters or events.

A riveting portrait of the cultural struggles and political conflicts of proposed copper-nickel mines in Minnesota’s Iron Range On an unseasonably warm October afternoon in Saint Paul, hundreds of people gathered to protest the construction of a proposed copper-nickel mine in the rural northern part of their state. The crowd eagerly listened to speeches on how the project would bring long-term risks and potentially pollute the drinking water for current and future generations. A year later, another proposed mining project became the subject of a public hearing in a small town near the proposed site. But this time, local politicians and union leaders praised the mine proposal as an asset that would strengthen working-class communities in Minnesota. In many rural American communities, there is profound tension around the preservation and protection of wilderness and the need to promote and profit from natural resources. In Mining the Heartland, Erik Kojola looks at both sides of these populist movements and presents a thoughtful account of how such political struggles play out. Drawing on over a hundred ethnographic interviews with people of the region, from members of labor unions to local residents to scientists, Kojola is able to bring this complex struggle over mining to life. Focusing on both pro- and anti-mining groups, he expands upon what this conflict reveals about the way whiteness and masculinity operate among urban and rural residents, and the different ways in which class, race, and gender shape how people relate to the land. Mining the Heartland shows the negotiation and conflict between two central aspects of the state's culture and economy: outdoor recreation in the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes and the lucrative mining of the Iron Range.

This volume investigates how mining affects societies and communities in Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan. As ex-Soviet states, Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan share history, culture and transitions to democracy. Most importantly, both are mineral-rich countries on China’s frontier and epi-centres of resource extraction. This volume examines challenges communities in these countries encounter on the long journey through resource exploration, extraction and mine closure. The book is organised into three related sections that travel from mine licensing and instigation to early anticipation of benefit through the realisation of social and environmental impacts to finite issues such as jobs, monitoring, dispute resolution and reclamation. Most originally, each chapter will include a final section entitled "Notes from the field" that presents the voice of in-country researchers and stakeholders. These sections will provide local contextual knowledge on the chapter’s theme by practitioners from Mongolia and Central Asia. The volume thereby offers a distinctively grounded perspective on the tensions and benefits of mining in this dynamic region. Using Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan as case studies, the volume reflects on the evolving challenges communities and societies encounter with resource extraction worldwide. The book will be of great interest to students and scholars of mining and natural resource extraction, corporate social responsibility and sustainable development.