Countries dominated by extractive industries are routinely advised to promote economic diversification in order to reduce their vulnerability to a broader ‘resource curse’ and to prepare for a future with depleted or less demanded resources. Understanding the relationship between extractive industries and economic diversification is, therefore, central to economic and social sustainability (Lashitew et al., 2020; Ross, 2017). Most analysis of this relationship, however, suffers from methodological bias, focusing on the national level, despite extractive industries being spatially bound to particular regions within a country.
The overall aim of this special issue is to broaden understanding of the relationship between extractive industries and diversification at the regional and local level. We see a lot of potential in connecting this endeavor to recent debates and conceptual advancements in Economic Geography. This line of research could be encouraging for systematically learning from interregional differences of diversification performance within resource-rich countries.
In particular, we welcome submissions that address but are not necessarily limited to the following questions:
- How does the regional presence of extractive industries affect the intensity and type (e.g. related vs. unrelated) of diversification?
- Why do diversification processes differ across commodity source regions?
- How do regional institutions moderate the effect of extractive industries on regional diversification?
- What is the role of technological relatedness between extractive industries and (potential) new industry entries?
- How do boom and bust-cycles of extractive industries affect new path creation processes?
- To what extent does the (functional) position of regions in extractive global production networks affect diversification processes?
- How do regions manage to diversify away from extractive industries and develop non-extractive paths? How are resource windfalls used by subnational governments to promote new industrial paths? Do they foster related or unrelated diversification? Which factors positively influence the success of new industry promotion?
Timeframes
Authors interested in submitting a manuscript to this Special Issue are required to first send an extended abstract (400 words + references) to [email protected] and/or [email protected] by 15th of May 2021.
Answer to the authors regarding the acceptance of the abstracts will be provided by 31st of May 2021
Full papers must be submitted by 1st of October 2021.
Submissions will be subject to the journal’s standard peer review process. Details regarding the publication process, evaluation criteria and style are available here on The Extractive Industries and Society journal website (https://www.elsevier.com/journals/the-extractive-industries-and-society/2214-790x/guide-for-authors). Please get in touch with any questions.
