This project probes how the circulation of natural resources shapes contemporary land use and environmental identities in the American Rust Belt. Drawing on data from historical archives, original interviews, and ethnography, I examine two cases—one rural and one urban—of boom and bust in a now-defunct, Midwestern iron and steel commodity chain. From this data, I ask how and why natural resources remain ideologically and economically central to post-industrial communities. I demonstrate how the mobility of capital reproduces environmental, economic, and social inequalities.This project revises our understanding of natural resource commodification by probing the tensions between the political economies of industrial capitalism and the place-based nature of social life. Specifically, I argue that post-deindustrialization, the commodification of nature continues to shape land use, infrastructures, and residents’ imaginaries of community identity and economic development. My argument is as follows. First, I draw on historical data to demonstrate how natural resource capitalism not only takes place, but it makes place. I show how the historical political economies of land use constructed persistent infrastructures and ideologies in the communities central to my study. Contemporary interviews reveal how long-term residents contemplate the past as they narrate their identities, reasons for staying, and ideal futures in their de-industrialized communities. Finally, I interrogate contemporary conflicts between possible revivals of industry and a new generation of tourism built on other “natural resources.” This project sheds light on why certain communities continue to center their identities, economic prospects, and perceptions of nature around the concept of natural resources, and offers wide-reaching implications concerning addressing structural and cultural components of human-environment decision-making.
ELEMENTARY STUDENTS’ CREATIVE THINKING SKILLS IN SCIENCE IN THE MALUKU ISLANDS, INDONESIA
