Extractive industries, power struggles and the battle of ideas

Continuously increasing demands of a planet hungry for commodities has opened the race for the resources of the Amazon region. Currently, 21 and 15 per cent of the Amazon is under concession to mining companies and hydrocarbon companies, respectively according to the Red Amazónica de Información Socioambiental Georeferenciada. These extractive industries and related impacts have the potential to radically transform the social development of the territories in which they take place, for better or worse. Within the many conflicts that accompany this race for resources, different forms of power are employed to gain control over natural resources. A recurrent element in these struggles is the use of discursive power. Remarkably, while discourses are omnipresent as extractive industries expand, a critical analysis of their nature and power remains quite neglected in research on the extractive industries. By scrutinizing the development discourses concerning the Amazon region, this think piece urges for a discursive turn in dealing with the extractive industries and local social development