| By Anthony Bebbington | Published in Extractive Industries, Social Conflict and Economic Development: Evidence from South America, pp. 3-26. Edited by A. Bebbington. London: Routledge.
Excerpt: The extraction of minerals, oil and gas has a long and ambiguous history in development processes – in North America, Europe, Latin America, Africa, Asia and Australasia. Extraction has yielded wealth, regional identities and in some cases capital for industrialisation. In other cases its main heritages have been social conflict, environmental damage and underperforming national economies. As the extractive economy has entered another boom period over the last decade, not least in Latin America, the countries in which this boom is occurring are challenged to interpret this ambiguity. Will the extractive industry yield, for them, economic development, or will its main gifts be ones of conflict, degradation and unequal forms of growth?