Cycles of Resource Nationalism: Hegemonic Shifts and the Incorporation of Extractive Peripheries

• In Event: 139 - Regular Session. Cross-National Sociology

Abstract

Scholars studying resource nationalism often see it as a strategy to protect national interests or an opportunistic tactic to take advantage of capitalist market upswings. However, resource nationalism is not merely a means for an oppressed or disadvantaged group to gain power or glean a greater share of a nation’s resource wealth. Examining the cases of Bolivia and Indonesia at two distinct temporal junctures, we argue that resource nationalism is a cyclical process intricately intertwined with the ascent and decline of global hegemons. Doing so, we demonstrate how during periods of material expansion global powers aspiring to re-shape the world-system as hegemonic powers offer differing opportunities to peripheral states for the extraction of resources from their territories and varying terms of incorporation into global circuits of capitalist accumulation.

Authors

• Brent Z. Kaup, College of William & Mary

• Paul K. Gellert, University of Tennessee