By Hervé Corvellec
In a world of nearly 10 billion people, the competition for resources is likely to become fierce. Food, energy, and material, but also power, freedom and knowledge. Where will these resources come from? Our answer is: social processes that turn things into resources. Resources do not simply exist. They become, and we label resourcification the social processes of resources that become resources.
Resourcification is a social process that occurs within specific time and space contexts. It does not reach all in the same way, some being affected in more positive or negative ways than others. Neither have all the same control over resourcification.
All resourcification processes are specific, but they share certain conditions: an extractivist view on nature, things, and people; an access to technology and infrastructure; a supportive discourse; legislation; the existing of a regime that determines the value of things.
There are also various modes of resourcification. Resourcification is usually pragmatic in the sense that it builds on what exists in terms of available biotic entities, tangible materials, and intangiblesfactors, like aesthetics, emotions and culture. But resourcification can also be ideological, for example, when politicians introduce market mechanisms where there are none. Management and governance are instrumental to resourcification, but so are art, literature, music, religion and metaphysics.
Finally, resourcification processes are characterised by differentiated temporalities. They draw on the past, present, and future. They also are unstable process that take place at different paces. Just like something can be turned into a resource, it can also stop being considered a resource. The current campaign “keep it in the ground” is a case in point of a fight for deliberate de-resourcification.
More about resourcification in two recent publications:
Hultman, Johan, Hervé Corvellec, Anne Jerneck, Susanne Arvidsson, Johan Ekroos, Clara Gustafsson, Fay Lundh Nilsson, and Niklas Wahlberg. 2021. "A resourcification manifesto: Understanding the social process of resources becoming resources." Research Policy 50 (9):104297. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2021.104297.
Corvellec, Hervé, Johan Hultman, Anne Jerneck, Susanne Arvidsson, Johan Ekroos, Niklas Wahlberg, and Timothy W. Luke. 2021. "Resourcification – A non-essentialist theory of resources for sustainable development." Sustainable Development. doi: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/sd.2222.