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New Historical Materialism, Extractive Economies, And Socioeconomic And Environmental Change, Paul Ciccantell

Paul Ciccantell

In this chapter, I examine the dual character of the role of raw materials in the evolution of the capitalist world-economy. The following sections will outline the key elements of new historical materialism, a theoretical model that builds on the work of Wallerstein (1974, 1979), Chase-Dunn (1989), and Arrighi (1994, 2009) in order to understand the multiple roles of raw materials in shaping the past five centuries of the capitalist world-economy. New historical materialism highlights the need to examine economic ascent in the core, the exploitation of the periphery, the relationships between these processes, and the impacts of these relationships …