The growth in consumption and production has escalated the need for energy and raw materials, with resource use reaching exceptionally high levels worldwide. Contrary to beliefs that the economy will decouple from natural resources and environmental impacts, the mining extraction frontier in the world continues to expand, which then triggers new conflicts around extractive industries in different localities.
This special issue aims at exploring contemporary mining conflicts in the context of increased global social metabolism and environmental justice movement, and hence at positioning mining activities as “glocal” processes.
We hereby invite scholars to submit original papers unveiling the nature of the debates and conflicts in the mining industry as well as the specific claims, mobilisation strategies including the role ofactivist knowledge and outcomes of the social movement. The targeted commodities are not only base metals (e.g. copper, zinc) or mineral commodities of interest to the energy or construction industries (e.g. coal, uranium, sand), but also involve precious metals such as gold and silver.
It is hoped that the special issue will help us to better understand the role and significance of mining conflicts in global environmental justice movement and in transition to sustainability. Methodological tools and theoretical frameworks from the cross-disciplinary fields of ecological economics, industrial ecology, environmental sociology, social ecology, economic geography and political ecology are all very welcomed.
The deadline for submission of initial proposals, with a title and abstract of max. 400 words, is July 12. Final manuscripts (arounds 8,000 words in length) will then be expected by early 2014.
Concerning the evaluation procedure, in the first screening phase, proposals fitting well to the special issue with a potential will be selected. Authors of papers that do not get beyond the first screening will be informed at a very early stage.
For any further queries, please do not hesitate to send an email to Begum Ozkaynak (Boğaziçi University, begum.ozkaynak@boun.edu.tr) and Beatriz Rodríguez-Labajos (Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, email hidden; JavaScript is required).
Note: please read EJOLT report 7 – Mining conflict from around the world – to get familiar with our work in this regard
