ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I generate a framework for analyzing when and how resistance can slow or reverse corporate resource exploitation, or secure other objectives of social movements. Sustained corporate strategies create capacity for corporate agency, and sustained mobilization strategies create capacity for contentious agency. Capacity is not enough, since one has still to have willingness to act, and act, believe that change is possible and desire it. The support given by the state to movements and corporations, and vice versa, is also important. The interaction of these three processes (corporate, contentious and state agency) forms the dynamics that explain natural resource politics. The state and civil society should be studied relationally, since focus on their relationship to other power networks offers a more flexible analytical tool than, for example, state-centered explanations, as Silva (2009) has demonstrated in his study on the occurrence and outcomes of anti-neoliberal mobilizations.
