DEVELOPMENT AS CONFLICT THEORETICAL NOTE ON RESOURCE-VIOLENCE NEXUS

Abstract

The rich literature on the conflict impact of mineral resource development conceives development as a process that leads to progress and peace, but only inadvertently generates conflict. Development-induced conflict is explained away as aberrant and
fleeting. The view neglects that some groups experience development as a penalising phenomenon, and misunderstand their efforts to undo victimisation. Developmentinduced conflicts are not pathological reactions to structural forces but political
projects by the poor aimed at countering the cultural, ecological and economic displacement characteristic of development in developing societies. A reconceptualization of resource development as conflict focuses attention on the inherently conflictual nature of actually existing development and the human and environmental costs it imposes on the voiceless and hardly visible. The article relies on three metaphors and eclectic theoretical sources in an effort to develop an alternative way of seeing development; as conflict rather than an entirely benign process. Such reconceptualisation of development draws attention to the need for policymakers and developments agencies to be attentive to the inherently conflictual nature of development and to provide for dealing with the contradictions. Moreover, it suggests a new way to understand and resolve the seemingly intractable resource-related conflicts in many parts of the world.