Commodities, Environment and Labour

Projects in this cluster look at the consequences of commodity extraction, production, exchange and consumption and the consequences for labour and environment.  The focus is on commodity frontiers, to be defined as processes and sites of the incorporation of resources into the expanding capitalist world economy.  Main questions concern  the consequences of this frontiers expansion for labour relations, natural assets and the environment? How does this affect workers at these frontiers? How do they resist these processes?

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Seven Frontiers

The Global South in the Age of Early Industrial Capitalism

Seven Frontiers

Atomic chains

Research into the history of the anti-nuclear energy movement (AKB) and its effects on public opinion and political decision making.

Atomic Chains

A Just Energy Transition? Lessons from the Dutch Shift from Coal to Gas

This research project compares the historical transition from coal to natural gas in the Netherlands (1963–1980) with today’s shift toward renewable energy.

Energy transition
Coal Porters

Completed Projects

Potosí

Producing silver for the world in the colonial period (16th - 18th Centuries)

Potosí
The Potosí Mountain of Silver and the city of Potosí today

The World of Sugar

Large-scale plantation slavery and forced labour, massive environmental damage and a now uncontrollable obesity pandemic. All this for a product we don't actually need.

The World of Sugar
World of Sugar

Labour in the Iranian Oil Industry

Developing an empirical and qualitative understanding of labour as well as labour force in the Iranian oil industry.

Oil Industry