Human ecology, land conversion and the global resource economy

The aim of the proposed research is to provide a comparative view of how globalizing resource regimes transform local societies and their environmental relations. Its particular focus is on the hybrid forms of society and knowledge which arise from the attempts to include local societies in an imaginary global market-place by redefining social relations as contracts and environmental relations as rights. We ask what happens when people begin to use the language of contracts and rights in an effort to represent themselves in different political contexts, and what hybrid forms of society and knowledge arise when this language is combined with existing environmental relations and social forms. The project has direct implications for development policies devised to encourage popular participation, technology transfer, conflict prevention and structural change.