Resisting coal

Hydrocarbon politics and assemblages of protest in the UK and Indonesia

Datos Bibliográficos

ID8945557
AutoresBenjamin Brown (0000-0002-3783-0281, University of Edinburgh), Samuel J Spiegel (0000-0003-2163-3512, University of Edinburgh, autor de correspondencia)
Año2017
Volumen85
Páginas101-111
Fecha de publicación2017-08-18
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaGeoforum (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0016-7185 • E-ISSN: 1872-9398
EditorialElsevier BV (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1016/j.geoforum.2017.07.015
OpenAlexW2745816313
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas25
Referencias citadas63

This article examines the social and material politics of coal, focusing on mobilizations against opencast mining in the United Kingdom and Indonesia. Contested spaces and practices elicited by coal extraction provide important openings through which to understand how ‘hydrocarbon modernity’ is experienced and entangled with different processes of neoliberal capitalism. We investigate resistance against coal at Ffos-y-Fran in South Wales and the IndoMet project in the Indonesian province of Central Kalimantan, exploring how assemblages of protest have challenged the material effects, discursive practices and regimes of accumulation attendant within the coal industry. In both countries, campaigns seeking to ‘end coal’ have built dynamic geographical alliances, and as collective challenges to mining activities have unfolded, we consider how movements targeting specific sites of extraction have sought to disrupt the industry’s 'dis-embedding' of coal from the landscape. Drawing on accounts of how hydrocarbon politics shape societies, the approach we present draws attention to changing linkages between economic, environmental and social advocacy while illuminating the varied ways in which coal mining can compound and perpetuate inequality

Archaeology · Capitalism · Coal · Coal mining · Geography · Indonesian · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Social movement · Sociology · Law · Mining and Resource Management · Water Governance and Infrastructure