Perspectives on Natural Resources in the Global Economy: Polity Series Review

Polity's Resources' series is a set of scholarly books, each of them dealing with a single resource or resource-based commodity from a generally global or international perspective. As of this writing, nine books have been published in the series, six of which I review here. The series is a welcome contribution to interdisciplinary and overall critical perspectives on the social and environmental dimensions and implications of the international appropriation, production and exchange of natural resources. While there is no clear disciplinary bent or theoretical foundation running across the volumes, together the books develop a transnational perspective, stressing the linkages between specific sites of appropriation and production, on the one hand, and broader political economic networks of processing, finance, coordination, commercial distribution and social regulation, on the other. The books should serve as valuable references to researchers in academic, government and non-government institutional settings, but should also prove valuable for undergraduate teaching on contemporary natural resource industries and their social regulation.