Extractivism and International Studies
Authors: Cerioli Luíza 
Published: February 2025

Extractivism relates to the appropriation, commodification, and exportation of raw materials. It is a development model that shapes entire societies rather than singular economic sectors and is characterized by (a) unequal specialization on exporting raw materials, (b) the dominance of rents in the surplus structure, and (c) the fact that the reproduction of society depends on the future inflow of these rents. Extractivism differs from the simple activity of extraction by being a process of ordering society, dominating an economy and establishing specific political institutions, state–society dynamics, and social practices. The mechanisms of distributing extractivist rents affect all the members of society, independently of whether they work directly in the extractivist sector.

Extractivism is risky, dirty, and prone to conflicts. More importantly, it is persistent and dynamic, and very few countries managed to escape it by boosting other productive sectors and promoting structural transformation. The reason for that relies on rents arising not by market forces but political mechanisms, which, once consolidated as the main source of revenue, become resistant to change. These rents are “seductive” and shape domestic politics and class configurations. Since the early 19th century, the global trade of raw materials has provoked an unequal division of labor that confines countries to the role of suppliers or buyers. In this process, the Global South became trapped in the extractivist development model.

Therefore, extractivism is an expression of global uneven development and must be a central topic within international studies. It affects how countries relate to one another, defining their development alternatives and international insertion. Moreover, extractivism is linked with climate change and the geopolitical readjustments that policies of decarbonization will unescapably provoke. Shifting from fossil fuels toward renewables ignites a race for strategic resources, creating new competition, opportunities, and tensions—affecting mechanisms for cooperation, integration, and alliance-building within international politics. International studies will fail to explain future global dynamics if they neglect extractivism.

Grasping extractivism as a persistent development model can underline challenges concerning the energy transition. Mounting pressures to mitigate the consequences of climate change in the Global South combine with persistent socioeconomic challenges (unemployment, poverty, inequality) that are linked to specialization in raw material exports. Structural unemployment and technological gaps mark a surplus structure dominated by rents. While the extractivist sector brings lots of money, it does not produce enough jobs and remains isolated from the other productive sectors. Simultaneously, this model remains based on a technology-dependent process that increases the divergence between the North and the South, maintaining global asymmetries. Therefore, among green growth optimists, degrowth pessimists, futuristic renewable megaprojects, and high-tech universalizing infrastructures, Global South countries see their window of opportunity for development reduce even further and struggle to formulate frameworks that prioritize, simultaneously, socioeconomic growth and energy transition. Sustainability has, hence, its dark sides and extractivism exposes them.