The Violent Technologies of Extraction

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xiii

   PDF

2. Introduction: Consuming Everything—Capitalism and the Imperative of Total Extractivism

   • Alexander Dunlap, Jostein Jakobsen

   Pages 1-12

3. The Spirit and Metaphysical Form of Capitalism: Devils, Worms, Octopuses and Worldeater(s)

   • Alexander Dunlap, Jostein Jakobsen

   Pages 13-41

4. Studying the Worldeater(s): Political Ecology and Critical Agrarian Studies and Their Origins, Differences and Convergence

   • Alexander Dunlap, Jostein Jakobsen

   Pages 43-72

5. Claws & Teeth: The Militarization of Nature

   • Alexander Dunlap, Jostein Jakobsen

   Pages 73-90

6. The Worldeater(s) in Process: Uncovering the Nexus of Conventional and ‘Green’ Extraction

   • Alexander Dunlap, Jostein Jakobsen

   Pages 91-118

7. Conclusion: Out of the Entrails—Reflections on Human Power

   • Alexander Dunlap, Jostein Jakobsen

   Pages 119-131

8. Back Matter

   Pages 133-164

   PDF

Offering a thought provoking theoretical conversation around ecological crisis and natural resource extraction, this book suggests that we are on a trajectory geared towards total extractivism guided by the mythological Worldeater. The authors discuss why and how we have come to live in this catastrophic predicament, rooting the present in an original perspective that animates the forces of global techno-capitalist development. 
They argue that the Worldeater helps us make sense of the insatiable forces that transform, convert and consume the world. The book combines this unique approach with detailed academic review of critical agrarian studies and political ecology, the militarization of nature and the conventional and ‘green’ extraction nexus. It seeks radical reflection on the role people play in the construction and perpetuation of these crises, and concludes with some suggestions on how to tackle them.

• political ecology
• extractivism
• critical agrarian studies
• green extraction nexus
• renewable energy
• land control
• green and conventional extraction
• capitalism
• total extractivism
• techno-capitalist world
• Leviathanic capitalist state system
• Worldeater
• militarization of nature
• Environmental Geography

“Those readers interested in creative new approaches to the most pressing dilemmas facing human and non-human nature, this book will be a source of insight and inspiration.” (W. Nathan Green, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, December 2, 2020)

• Centre for Development & the Environment, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

  Alexander Dunlap, Jostein Jakobsen

Alexander Dunlap is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo, Norway. His work has critically examined police-military transformations, market-based conservation, wind energy development and extractive projects more generally in both Latin America and Europe.

Jostein Jakobsen is a doctoral research fellow at the Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo, Norway. His research focuses on agrarian change in India, food regime analysis, meatification, and the Naxalite movement in India, set within broad interests in political ecology and critical agrarian studies.


 

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