Resource Geography

The study of human valuation and use of Earth's materials lies at the core of the modern discipline of geography. Indeed, investigation into the character, production, and distribution of natural resources might be said to be a quintessential pursuit for a discipline that has in large part been fashioned on the relationships between humans and their environment. Linked to political geographies by concerns over territoriality and proprietorship, to economic geographies through networks of production and consumption, to social and cultural geographies by collective practice and meaning making, and to environmental geographies through [Page 2447]the modification of natural systems, the study of resource geographies requires consideration of both the “human” and the “physical” sides of the discipline. As such, it is well conceived as a specialty where contemporary disciplinary concerns over the constitution of socionatural assemblages might profitably proceed.

This entry presents three broad imperatives that have marked natural resource investigations during the development of the modern Anglo-American discipline: (1) the creation of imperial inventories, (2) the management of natural capital, and (3) the analysis of political-economic systems and political-ecological networks. While each is a part of a genealogy of scientific engagement with the stuff of Earth, the respective imperatives identified here have differentially marked resource studies in geography during succeeding phases of the discipline's history. The imperial inventory period spanned the late 18th through the early 20th century; concerns over the expansion and management of natural capital took center stage in the middle to latter decades of the 20th century and persist today; and efforts to deconstruct and analyze the political-economic and political-ecological networks that produce natural resources became a preoccupation in the decades leading up to the turn of the 20th century and continue into the 21st. Thus, in presenting an overview of each period and the dominant imperative driving natural resource study, the aim of this entry is to situate the development of the subfield of resource geography within the broader context of the changing intellectual terrain of the discipline as a whole.