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Material Worlds: Natural Resources, Resource Geography and the Material Economy
Author(s) -
Bridge Gavin
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
geography compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.587
H-Index - 65
ISSN - 1749-8198
DOI - 10.1111/j.1749-8198.2009.00233.x
Subject(s) - natural resource , resource (disambiguation) , scarcity , consumption (sociology) , diversity (politics) , value (mathematics) , contradiction , product (mathematics) , exploitation of natural resources , economic geography , resource productivity , economic system , economy , economics , sociology , ecology , social science , market economy , computer network , philosophy , geometry , mathematics , epistemology , machine learning , computer science , anthropology , biology
This article lays out a set of arguments about natural resources, the material economy, and resource geography. It explains the productive position resources occupy in the organization of knowledge and establishes ‘natural resources’ as a potent social category for designating parts of the non‐human world to which value is attached. The article then elaborates two claims: (1) that we live in a material world in which ‘the economy’ is fundamentally – although not exclusively – a process of material transformation through which natural resources are converted into a vast array of commodities and by‐product wastes; and (2) that the material economy of resource production, transformation and consumption is one of contradiction and paradox. The bulk of the article outlines seven specific resource paradoxes: scale/quality, complexity/risk, scarcity/abundance, value/intensity, diversity/dependence, wealth/poverty, intimacy/ignorance – and explains what they reveal about the geographical and historical dynamics of resource production and consumption.