Social Science Research Council

"Construction" of Resources: This theme tries to move beyond taken-for-granted notions of what constitutes a resource in order to provoke fresh and insightful inquiry into the subject from various disciplinary perspectives. Questions to be considered include how do the material and symbolic meanings of resources vary across time, space and social groups? How are resources created through social action and how do they in turn shape social being?

"Conflict" and Resources: Many analyses attribute resource conflicts to competition over scarce resources, without examining the structuring institutions and ideologies from which conflicts emerge and in which they are embedded. Is scarcity always a factor in conflict? How do larger institutional frameworks such as the market and the state condition conflicts over resources? What role do ideologies and identities play in shaping experiences and perceptions of resource conflicts? What forms does resource conflict take and how is it negotiated?

"Rights" and Resources: The question here is to ask not just what constitute resources in a society, but what constitutes the social relations of, and access to, "resources". In such a context we need to explore (a) the double character of resources as both public and private (b) the various ethical arguments that have underpinned the social relation of rights to resources; (c) the geo-political and geo-cultural scale of rights - individual, group, city, nation, state, region, globe - as a predicating factor in shaping our idea of resources.

"Institutions" and Resources: How human beings look at nature depends not only on individual rationality (on which much of neo-liberal economics is built) but also to a great extent on collective reflection and interpretation. Is it more accurate to say that "nature out there" becomes a "natural resource" through a social process of constructing the world by putting together ideas and institutions to achieve a new view of reality? What kinds of consequences for the environment emerge from different combinations of ideas and institutions? How much of our differences emerge from different scientific and social scientific understandings of institutions and resources -- from "resource sciences" to cultural anthropology, international relations, human geography, law and history?