Through an engagement with an emerging strand of critical urban theory that reworks Henri Lefebvre’s notion of ‘planetary urbanisation’, this dissertation explores the complex relation between contemporary forms of resource extraction and processes of capitalist urbanisation. It does so through the case of the Huasco Valley, an erstwhile agrarian region in northern Chile that was comprehensively redesigned and engineered into a mining, energy and agroindustrial hinterland strongly embedded in global networks of production and exchange. The thesis begins by offering a general exploration of the political economy of the 1993-2013 commodity boom, which set the foundations for new institutional, economic and corporate scenarios that led to an explosive rate of industrialisation and urbanisation across remote and rural geographies of Latin America. In the Huasco Valley, this context has translated into socioecological plunder, disruptions in public health, labour precariousness, intraurban displacement, and exponential growth of household debt. On this basis, I suggest that the production of urban space that underlies geographies of extraction is intrinsically uneven and in that sense, symptomatic of a world order dependent on the ongoing fabrication of invisibilised and fractured peripheries that are subservient to the consolidation of a seamless global space for the efficient circulation of commodities. The dissertation then goes on to argue that the existing literature on planetary urbanisation has been insufficiently attentive to questions of labour and production, and this has precluded an analysis of the properly political underpinnings of the complete urbanisation of society. By advancing a materialist conception of history, I focus on labour transformations in the Huasco Valley to illustrate how, besides dispossession and socioecological degradation, the projection of material infrastructures for resource extraction has created the conditions of possibility for radical and emancipatory change. Processes of urbanisation taking place in this valley have not only transformed the built environment and the sphere of reproduction –via institutionalised forms of credit, cultural practices and consumer cultures-, but production itself. Automation, lean production, logistical networks, outsourcing and cybernetic systems, among others, have radically transformed instruments and relations of production, thereby replacing isolation and parochialism with vibrant forms of community, political organisation and metabolic interaction with extra-human natures.

In the absence of Canadian legislation this thesis conducts an exploratory study of the regulations Canadian extraction companies (mining and oil and gas) have implemented to control private security in developing countries. It focuses on discerning what private security policies extraction companies have in place and whether companies have adopted voluntary regulations such as the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights. For this study a survey was conducted of almost all extraction companies listed on the TSX and TSX Venture Exchange. Publically available documents, such as company websites, codes of conduct, annual reports, and corporate presentations, were analyzed to determine what regulations companies have in place. The data indicates that regulation of private security is mainly limited to Canada’s largest extraction companies and that private security is usually a small portion of a company’s overall corporate social responsibility policy. This research also reviews incidents of human rights abuses committed by private security personnel working for Canadian extraction companies over the last ten years. Incidents are drawn from media outlets, NGOs, and academic articles. These cases help illustrate the challenges Canadian companies face employing private security personnel on the ground.

In the absence of Canadian legislation this thesis conducts an exploratory study of the regulations Canadian extraction companies (mining and oil and gas) have implemented to control private security in developing countries. It focuses on discerning what private security policies extraction companies have in place and whether companies have adopted voluntary regulations such as the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights. For this study a survey was conducted of almost all extraction companies listed on the TSX and TSX Venture Exchange. Publically available documents, such as company websites, codes of conduct, annual reports, and corporate presentations, were analyzed to determine what regulations companies have in place. The data indicates that regulation of private security is mainly limited to Canada’s largest extraction companies and that private security is usually a small portion of a company’s overall corporate social responsibility policy. This research also reviews incidents of human rights abuses committed by private security personnel working for Canadian extraction companies over the last ten years. Incidents are drawn from media outlets, NGOs, and academic articles. These cases help illustrate the challenges Canadian companies face employing private security personnel on the ground.

In the absence of Canadian legislation this thesis conducts an exploratory study of the regulations Canadian extraction companies (mining and oil and gas) have implemented to control private security in developing countries. It focuses on discerning what private security policies extraction companies have in place and whether companies have adopted voluntary regulations such as the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights. For this study a survey was conducted of almost all extraction companies listed on the TSX and TSX Venture Exchange. Publically available documents, such as company websites, codes of conduct, annual reports, and corporate presentations, were analyzed to determine what regulations companies have in place. The data indicates that regulation of private security is mainly limited to Canada’s largest extraction companies and that private security is usually a small portion of a company’s overall corporate social responsibility policy. This research also reviews incidents of human rights abuses committed by private security personnel working for Canadian extraction companies over the last ten years. Incidents are drawn from media outlets, NGOs, and academic articles. These cases help illustrate the challenges Canadian companies face employing private security personnel on the ground.

This thesis explores the role of authority and how Indigenous people have been gravely impacted throughout the 2014 Mount Polley Mine Disaster. Through critical engagement of political theory, environmental racism, and Indigenous Nationhood, I offer an analysis of the disaster that asks: How do we construct, accept, and uphold notions of authority in the Mount Polley Mine Disaster? I answer this by conducting a discourse analysis informed by Kwakwaka’wakw geographer Sarah Hunt’s colonialscape, Environmental historian Traci Brynne Voyles’s wastelanding, and Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s spatiolegal concepts of the state of exception and bare life. To conclude, I will provide an alternative understanding of authority that is grounded in Indigenous feminist approaches that can better represent what authority should look like. / Graduate / 2020-08-29

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Rapid resource development in northern and rural Canada is leading to unprecedented social, political, economic and environmental changes in a number of communities. In particular, gendered identities and divisions of labour in northern Canadian communities are poised to be dramatically altered by increasing labour demands, shifting time-use patterns, and intensifying income inequalities. Through a feminist poststructuralist discourse analysis of print media coverage of gendered issues in Fort McMurray, and semi-structured interviews with thirty-two women working in either the male-dominated oil sector or the female-dominated social services sector, this dissertation examines how women in Fort McMurray, Alberta—the host community for the Athabasca oil sands—negotiate their identities and make sense of the opportunities and challenges associated with the recent oil boom. Drawing on materialist feminist and feminist poststructuralist theory, this dissertation first elaborates a comprehensive analytical framework for investigating gender in the context of natural resource extraction. This framework contends that gendered identities are inherently multiple, and divisions of labour are embedded in particular temporal and spatial contexts. Furthermore, this framework examines discursive and material contradictions in diverse gendered experiences of resource extraction in order to move beyond universalizing gendered interests and identities. Second, this dissertation examines how discursively constructed female subject positions in local and global print media over the past decade adopt a frame of frontier masculinity. I demonstrate that these subject positions become resources upon which women in Fort McMurray draw on to negotiate their identities in ways that perpetuate a sense of dependency and anomalousness. Finally, I explore how neoliberal discourses of individualism and meritocracy provide a potential site of resistance to hegemonic frontier masculinity in women’s narratives of their opportunities and challenges. However, I ultimately argue that neoliberal discourses and practices do not prove transformative of gendered identities and divisions of labour because women are only able to partially engage with neoliberal subjectivity, which neglects collective interests and wellbeing.

Many ecosystems are losing biodiversity, raising concern for the services they provide. However, the extent of loss is uncertain, especially for insects that use freshwater during their life. Further study is needed to assess freshwater insect abundances and diversity. In Central Appalachian streams, macroinvertebrate diversity declines in response to mining-induced salinization and resulting changes to ecosystem processes remain largely unknown, such as how the availability and movement of macroinvertebrate biomass is altered in stream food webs. However, taxa observed are dependent upon sampling effort that could bias diversity-process interpretation. Taxon sampling curves can be used to estimate sampling effort that maximizes the probability of complete community characterization. We sampled six streams in the Central Appalachian region for benthic macroinvertebrates and explored the number of samples needed to capture taxonomic richness in salinized streams. Sampling effort did not differ between reference and salinized streams, though more uneven distributions of macroinvertebrates in salinized streams seemed to necessitate greater sampling effort relative to reference streams. We also used taxon and trait-based sampling curves to expand our understanding of biodiversity and functional responses to environmental change. Because macroinvertebrate biomass and emergence can assess the movement and changes in organic material and energy in response to a salinization gradient, we added them as additional metrics. Macroinvertebrates may have varied responses to a stressor dependent upon life stage, suggesting that assessments relying only on immatures may not fully characterize the effects of salinization. We sampled benthic macroinvertebrate biomass and emergent insect biomass from six streams in the Central Appalachian region to be representative of a salinization gradient. We predicted benthic biomass would either decrease, be maintained by greater density and biomass of salt-tolerant taxa, or increase from a salt subsidy effect, while emergent biomass would decrease disproportionately relative to benthic biomass due to late instar and pupae succumbing to stress. Our results suggest that total benthic macroinvertebrate biomass is maintained along a salinization gradient despite the loss of salt-sensitive mayflies due to compensation by salt-tolerant taxa that experience a subsidizing effect. Emergent biomass was variable among streams with peak emergence occurring in spring, with no apparent negative response to increasing conductivity. The present study can help to further develop metrics of stream ecosystem processes in response to a disturbance gradient. / Master of Science in Life Sciences / Freshwater salinization is a growing, global concern. Pollution and accelerated weathering of rock, caused by human activities, introduce salts to streams and other freshwaters. Surface coal mining is a common land use in the Central Appalachian region and increases leaching of sulfate and other major ions that increase stream salinity, leading to losses of aquatic insect species. Aquatic insects are important to stream processes, such as providing food to other animals, and they can serve as the bioassessments when impacts are suspected. For example, the impacts of salinization on streams are not fully understood despite bioassessments. We sampled aquatic insects from six Appalachian streams with varying levels of salinity. We estimated the sampling effort needed to characterize aquatic larval insect communities in streams with low salinity compared to streams with high salinity. We found that about six samples captured 80 percent of estimated total taxa and that insect communities with greater unevenness required more sampling effort. Such comparisons will allow us to make more informed decisions when sampling aquatic insects and assessing the effects of salts on streams. We also estimated insect biomass in streams using two life stages, larvae and adults, to determine if these life stages would respond differently to salinization. As we expected, total larval biomass slightly increased as the concentration of salt increased, but mayfly biomass decreased. Mayflies are an important and diverse group of insects in Appalachian streams and decreases in their biomass can have consequences for insect communities and stream food webs. Even though emergent insect biomass was found to represent only a small proportion of the larval biomass observed in streams, they represent critical food for terrestrial animals. Estimates of benthic and emergent biomass could be considered to refine bioassessments that support future management and policy regarding surface mining and the rising issue of freshwater salinization.

This thesis is concerned with game-theoretic models of oligopoly resource markets. They revolve around an open market, on which a number of firms sell a common resource. The market price-demand relationship means that the price (demand) that results from the firm’s production (pricing) decisions is a function of the decisions of all firms selling to that market. This means that firms must generally anticipate the actions of competing firms when determining their own strategies, which means that these models often need to be analysed using game theory. We focus on games in which the resource is exhaustible, with the exception of Chapter 5, in which the majority of the analysis is carried out in an inexhaustible resources setting. Exhaustibility introduces an additional complication into these games; that of allocating the extraction and sale of a limited resource pool over time. We consider several separate areas of extension, which we outline below. In Chapter 2, we consider a dynamic Stackelberg game. Stackelberg competition is an asymmetric form of competition in which one player (the leader) has the ability to pre-commit to and announce a strategy in advance. The ability to pre-commit to a strategy is almost always highly valuable, and in this case allows the leader to drive down the follower’s production by pre-committing to drive up their own. We follow the framework used in [62] to analyse Cournot competition to derive our results. In Chapter 3, we compare the two settings in which resource extraction models are usually formulated: Open-Loop, in which the players determine their strategies as functions of time and the initial resource levels of the players only; and Feedback-Loop, in which the players determine their strategies at each point in time as a function of the current resource levels at that time. Our focus is on the investigation of the relationship between the difference in the production or value of a firm under these two models, and the distribution of resources across the firms. In Chapter 4, we consider a common property resource game. These involve multiple firms which can extract from a common resource pool. We study a widely-used Open- viii Loop model, as formulated in [79]. We examine the result that analysis of the problem by standard methods results in two candidate equilibria, and argue that one of these equilibria can be ruled out by construction of a superior response. In Chapter 5, we analyse joint constraints on production, namely constraints which are met when the total production is above or below a certain level. It is a well- established result that these constraints can result in multiple equilibria. We provide several brief extensions to existing uniqueness results. We also demonstrate methods by which these results can be utilised to analyse games with piecewise-linear windfall taxes or congestion charges. Finally, we discuss the problems of extending these results to games with resource exhaustibility.

This thesis examines scientific, technological, and organizational innovations in Newfoundland's saltfish industry between 1887 and 1937. Since entering the orbit of European capital in the fifteenth century, Newfoundland's economy and society was organized around the export of saltfish (salted and dried cod) to consuming markets in Southern Europe and Latin America. By the nineteenth century, saltfish production was organized primarily around the small-scale fishing family financed by merchant capital. This mode of production consistently produced a large aggregate amount of saltfish of highly uneven quality. By the late-nineteenth century, however, this production system was placed under pressure as consumers in the key European markets demanded uniformly high quality saltfish, and Newfoundland's competitors began providing it. Using archival and secondary sources, this thesis examines attempts to improve and modernize saltfish production in Newfoundland over a fifty-year period, beginning with the formation of the first Fisheries Commission in 1887.I argue that saltfish producers had to confront and overcome "the problem of fluctuation." This refers to both the biogeophysical processes controlling the quantity of cod extracted (reproduction, predation, ocean dynamics, etc.) and the biogeophysical processes determining the quality of saltfish produced and consumed (decomposition, preservation, socio-biology of consumption). In contrast to many studies of the political economy of fishing, and inspired by agrarian political economy, I develop a theoretical framework called "aquarian political economy" that expands the analytical focus beyond extraction to include the entire circulation of capital. Between 1887 and 1937, I document a number of attempts at reshaping biogeophysical processes to suit the dynamics of capital accumulation in the "upstream" (pre-extraction) and "downstream" (post-extraction) phases of production. These innovations proceeded by way of introducing abstract, scientific forms of measure, which identified and helped render biogeophysical processes as amenable to human control. I define these innovations as moments in an expanded conception of the "real subsumption of nature under capital." Although many of these innovations and interventions were defined by false starts and only partial success, I conclude that this period witnessed a shift in the notion of expertise from practical experience on the ocean to techno-scientific managerial knowledge behind the desk. Through my empirical research and theoretical framework, this thesis makes a contribution to the political economy of fishing, critical resource geography, and the historical political economy of Newfoundland.