View article

For anyone living in Northern Idaho, it is difficult to imagine that their seemingly inconsequential slice of life would be a significant link in neo-extractivist global commodity chains. Yet, starting in 2009, residents in north Idaho communities saw first-hand global capital’s constant pursuit of profit means that all places are potential, new frontiers for economic opportunities. Northern Idaho is one of those new frontiers.

This essay uses a few terms—neo-extractivism, frontier, and global commodity chains—that require clarification. Contemporary analyses of primary resource extraction now refer to neo-extractivism. Observed as a global resurgence of intensive extractive practices, neo-extractivism is ideologically maintained by what Maristella Svampa calls a “commodity consensus” that “focuses on the massive implementation of extractive projects oriented toward exportation, establishing greater flexibility in the state’s role …