Contentious Agency and Natural Resource Politics

The looming depletion of non-renewable resources has increased the global land grab in the past decade. So far however, the question of how and when people can influence economic outcomes has received little attention in the study of social movements. Based on in-depth ethnographic field research since 2003 in the industrial forestry expansion frontiers in Brazil and elsewhere in the global South, this book presents a novel theory to explain how the interaction between resistance, companies and the state determines investment outcomes.