Extractives industries as a social analysis field: three perspectives and a debate essay

Abstract

This essay tries to participate in the debate about the extractive hydrocarbon and minerals industries, which in the last years has become an interesting topic for an increasing number of academicians in the social science field as well as for environment and human rights organizations and for the international organizations focused on development. The main point of this paper is that many of the analysis about the political and social implications of the extractive activities can be gathered in three perspectives, and each one of them insists in different dimensions of the phenomenon: the state institutions, the rentier dynamics or the international economic structure. We will analyze the potentials and specially the limitations of all of them and we will insist on the need of an approach that keeps an eye on the special features and concrete historic paths of the production places and also on the transnational dimensions always implied in the processes.