Introduction: natural resources

Abstract

This section includes eight entries on the economic anthropology of natural resources. The insights and discussions are based on research carried out on agricultural crisis in India; the value of nature and land in South Africa, France, and Belgium; the value chains of gold mining in Ghana; the decisions that Malagasy make about planting rice, hunting, making sacrifices, and fishing strategies; the conflicts over energy as a human right in global networks; the financialization of water in Europe; and of climate finance as an emergent global market. The entries highlight that an analysis of the political economy of natural resources iscrucial but that this analysis needs to consider people's life worlds. The entries show that political and economic struggles over natural resources are shaped by symbolic interpretations of nature, and varying moral universes. People's perspectives, worldviews and experiences play a prominent role in the shaping of conflicts over natural resources. Inequalities and people's interpretation of them are entangled with how the relationship between themselves and nature, and between themselves and other groups, are evaluated.