Affective Economies of Extraction: Gender, Power and Resistance

This session expects to examine extractivism and resource grabs as ecological and material interventions, grounded in gendered dynamics which get impacted by affective governance. We seek papers that will afford a macro-analyses of discourses, programs & policies, as well as those probing life in proximity to extractive zones and alternative notions of rights. Bringing together thoughts of feminist political economy, postcolonial theory and affect theory, this panel identifies extractivism at the intersection of race, gender, sexuality, ethnicity, and rights which links global capital, development agendas and lived experiences.

How do states mobilize development discourses and climate change to legitimate extractive projects? Through what kind of emotional practice and conceptualizations of rights do gendered subjects invest in extractive projects as generative of opportunities amid dispossession and ecological disaster? Moreover, how do communities resist, rework, or refuse extractivist futures through alternative affective and political practices? Panelists will contribute to critical sociological debates about extractivism by centering connections between structural & geopolitical dynamics that shape extractivism in its most intimate and emotional deployment through specific programs and policies.