International organisations and the commodification of natural resources

• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
• the Robert Schuman Centre Seminar Series

How did the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East shape the politics of resources, and imperialism between 1947 and 1972?

In this session, Glenda Sluga will discuss an essay intervening in current debates regarding the history of international organisations and their political significance, as well as the impact of extractive capitalism, by studying the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East, or ECAFE, from 1947 to 1972.

This study of ECAFE’s mineral/natural resources programmes tracks the changing parameters of the tensions between imperialism and anti-imperialism, and of the capacious and often contradictory ideological work that ‘international’ could do. This history takes us from the region’s energy transition to oil and gas, to the invention of the ocean as a new ‘commodity frontier’. It establishes a picture of the international as a space contiguous with the politics of empires and nations, and their shifting borders.

As ECAFE drew the interest of state and non-state powers, and public and private institutions in the economic potential of mineral resources, it accentuated the turn to ever-widening international ambitions for defining the relationship of humans to the earth itself.

The Schuman Centre's Seminar Series consists of weekly sessions where all members of the Centre can present ongoing work, including work-in-progress and discussions on topical issues. The series alternates between presentations of research projects by our post-doctoral fellows and sessions featuring presentations and debates with both internal and external speakers on a wide range of topics.