Speaking with Timothy Pfaff in the Financial Times Magazine sometime last year, anti-war activist and writer Maxine Hong Kingston remarked: 'It’s terrible to be in a country that is making war all over the world.' Sociology professor and environmental activist Al Gedicks, in this compact, well-researched and urgent volume, concurs, sharing similar sentiments about US – and broadly Western – neo-imperial ambitions, now vehemently militarist. But as the book title reveals; his argument is not limited to the blinkered passion for war or the war-making craft. He targets dry lampoons at probably the worst capitalist culprits – mining and oil multinational corporations – who traverse the earth’s expanse with nomadic fervor, stripping it of mineral resources along the line. And just like the big bully who takes delight in rattling little Johnnie on the way home from school, these companies carry on their activities with sheer force, oblivious to ethics or accountability, disregarding the rights of those natives whose claim to their lands, however resource-rich, is primarily ancestral, untainted by pecuniary sheen.
It’s a globalizing world and capital is 'reigning.' However, the so-called 'invisible' hand of the market is yet to bring about the much needed state of global socioeconomic nirvana spoken about so lavishly by capitalist mavericks only two decades ago. Instead, globalism has succeeded in creating more rigid elitist structures; distorting, marginalizing, and exploiting at a grander scale. By blurring – in the name of globalization – the reality of environmental destruction and injustice with hypocritical demeanor, the extractive corporations reveal just how avaricious they are. And perhaps they have good enough reason to bite with glee the fingers (that is, the environment) that feed them, backed as it is by the geopolitical interests of military-industrial hegemony.
However grisly the supposition, the fact remains that as increasing pressure is being mounted on natural resources greater threats are brewing in the meanwhile: global warming, air and water pollution, extinction of some plant and animal species, and the destruction of farmland are some examples. But a heady problem remains: that posed to native peoples. In many ways, their existence has become like gnats, 'disturbing' the ventures of global capital.
Recognizing the effusive signals of inequity amidst the delirium of cut-throat consumerist magic and neo-imperialism is a task Gedicks urges us on to. 'Beneath all the rationalizations about progress and economic development,' he writes, 'lies the insatiable consumption of minerals and energy by the world’s leading industrial economies.' He shows very ably how resource extraction, to satisfy the yearnings of largely military ('our civilization is at stake here guys') interests, triggers bouts of unrest, conflict and violence in the communities where mining sites are located and mining activities occur. Certainly, the trick or treat approach to profiteering by the mining industry has come, by default if you will, with incessant genocide, ethnocide, invasions, victimization, and internal displacement and refugeeism.
Amongst other cases Gedicks well describes the havocs and brutalities wreaked under the rubric of 'progress' by Shell and Chevron in Nigeria’s Niger-Delta, the subjugation of the peoples of West Papua by Freeport McMoRan and Rio Tonto, and the resistance by the Sokaogon Chippewa of northeastern Wisconsin against the 'colonization' of their lands by multinational mining concerns.
The author makes an admirable case for 'resource efficiency': delineating the reduction of metal consumption especially on the part of the military, taxation of mining companies involved in virgin exploration, and recycling as meritorious strategies. But most importantly, Gedicks’ thesis is aimed at bringing the abuses, insensitivity and exploitative maneuverings of multinational mining and oil corporations the world over. As neutered 'cooperation' morphs into, or moves in tandem with, ghoulish threats of 'hush or be crushed,' the inevitable result is contesting between natives and multinationals at an incredible scale. Developments in the last decade or thereabout – when environmental justice networks took on a bolder agenda – underscores this.
More and more, popular transnational organizations are coalescing worldwide against the assault on native lands. Again, as Gedicks makes known, the basis for the formation of these networks is to advocate the rights of weak(ened) communities, especially in the Third World. There is much sense in the author’s opinion that '[i]n the absence of governmental regulation, grassroots and popular movements have emerged to defend native cultures, protect human health and preserve fragile ecosystems.' Although theirs is a task fraught with structural difficulty, it is nevertheless a noble one; and it deserves far-ranging support.
A meticulous work, rich in detail and case studies, even spotting some charming maps; Resource Rebels is a compelling call to observe the cracks on the wall and to do something, quickly, about it. Well worth reading.
Resource Rebels: Native Challenges to Mining and Oil Corporations. 2001
By Al Gedicks
Cambridge: South End Press, 2001.
--Akinbola E. Akinwumi is a writer and researcher currently living in Lagos, Nigeria where he writes from.
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