Natural Resource Dependence: The Dual Dependence of Resource Rich Areas in Rural America

• In Event: 1248 - The Curse of Resources: Commodifying Development, Developing Commodities

Abstract

Spatially uneven development represents a wicked problem for rural people and places. Research has shown that underdevelopment is more likely in natural resource dependent communities than in places with non-natural resource-based economies. While researchers have investigated the linkages between natural resource dependence and negative socioeconomic outcomes, the need for a middle-range theory of resource dependence linking natural resource dependence, poverty, inequality, and income growth in the United States remains. In this paper I develop a theory of rural natural resource dependence, addressing both extractive (e.g. mining, timber) and non-extractive (e.g tourism, real estate) development in the United States. I draw on three bodies of literature---the resource curse literature, the resource dependence literature, and the critical literature of uneven development---to argue rural natural resource dependence represents a special case of the core-periphery relationship, wherein rural resource rich areas form a dual-dependence upon both the global capitalist economy and the local natural environment. This results in targeted exploitation from natural resource interests. Due to the lack of within-country economic regulation and the free movement of capital, external interests can use their power to pressure rural economies in directions outside their best interest. While historically these interests were predominately focused on natural resource extraction, over the past 50 years non-extractive interests have increasingly replaced extractive forms of development. When viewed this way I argue that non-extractive interests, while pushing a different use of the resource base, do not fundamentally vary in their exploitative relationship with rural communities in the United States.

Author

• J. Tom Mueller, Penn State