Resource Politics

This research attempts to analyse the politics of natural resources, especially water and oil, from a historical materialist perspective.

This interest stretches back to 1994, when I worked as a researcher on water issues at the Applied Research Institute of Jerusalem, a leading Palestinian NGO. My PhD explored Israeli-Palestinian water politics during the 1990s, and this was reworked and published by IB Tauris in 2003. I have also written more broadly on Middle Eastern water politics. The range of issues which this work addresses include:

• the impacts of patterns of class conflict, state formation and development on water policy
• inter-state conflict and cooperation in the Middle East over trans-boundary water resources
• the failings of Israeli and Palestinian water management during the Oslo era
• the impacts of discriminatory Israeli policies on water supply to Palestinians
• the use of scientific and technological inequalities in the service of discriminatory supply policies
• sociological coping practices in the face of water scarcity

 

I have also written on the differences between the politics of water, and the politics of oil; and am currently working on a book entitled The Global Politics of Oil (to be published by Polity in 2008).

 

Publications on Resource Politics

Water, Power and Politics in the Middle East: The Other Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (London: IB Tauris, 2003).

“‘New security thinking’ in Israeli-Palestinian water relations,” in Hans Günter Brauch et al (eds.), Facing Global Environmental Change (Springer-Verlag, forthcoming 2007).

“Joint mismanagement: reappraising the Oslo water regime,” in Hillel Shuval and Hasan Dweik (eds.), Water for Life in the Middle East, Vol. I (2006), pp. 322-40.

“The geopolitics of water in the Middle East: fantasies and realities,” Third World Quarterly, Vol. 26, No. 2 (2005), pp. 329-49.

“Oil and water: the contrasting anatomies of resource conflicts,” Government and Opposition, special issue on resource conflicts, Vol. 40, No. 2 (2005), pp. 200-224.

“Dressing up domination as ‘co-operation’: the case of Israeli-Palestinian water relations,” Review of International Studies, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2003), pp. 121-38.

“Control and flow: rethinking the sociology, technology and politics of water consumption” (with Heather Chappells and Elizabeth Shove), in Maurie Cohen and Joseph Murphy (eds.), Exploring Sustainable Consumption: Environmental Policy and the Social Sciences (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2001).

“The Palestinian water crisis: status, projections and potential for resolution” (with Jad Isaac), Natural Resources Forum, Vol. 20, No. 1 (1996), pp. 17-26.

now go to: The Political Economy of Peace Processes | Resource Politics | Social and International Theory