The notions of hinterlands, operational or extractive landscapes are at the heart of the description of centre-periphery relations, expolations and dynamics typical of the unfolding of the capitalist system. These landscapes and territories lie outside the traditional global metropolises and urban agglomerations. However, they form particular spatial and temporal interfaces of the urban and the rural. For this reason, they constitute a particularly promising field of study, which has attracted numerous disciplinary approaches in different ways – such as commodification processes historiography (Beckert et al., 2021; Moore, 2000), political ecology (Angelo & Wachsmuth, 2015; N. Heynen et al., 2006; N. C. Heynen et al., 2006) and eco-Marxism (Napoletano et al., 2018), rural studies (Ghosh, 2022; Gillen et al., 2022; Krause, 2013) and, more recently, urban studies, particularly with the perspective of planetary urbanisation (Brenner, 2014, 2016; Brenner & Katsikis, 2020, 2023; Brenner & Schmid, 2015; Schmid & Brenner, 2011).
A plethora of concepts and terms have been developed to capture these spatialities and the dynamics that shape them: extended urbanization (Monte-Mór & Castriota, 2018), desakota (McGee, 2017), agrarian urbanism (Gururani, 2023), etc.
This session aims to lay the foundations for a discussion that can overcome disciplinary boundaries and bring together distinct concepts and perspectives. To this end, we propose to adopt a precise focus: the study of (mainly) European extractive territories, through an approach that should also consider their evolution over time – the historical dimension allows us to complexify our understanding of contemporary extraction dynamics.
Indeed, European marginal territories were characterised 200 years ago by dynamics that resemble closely those to which some territories in the Global South are subjected today – such as emigration, the dominance of extractive oligarchies, expoliation of the commons, colonial or neo-colonial processes. Thus, we posit, a study of these spaces might bring up important insights on how former peripheries change their socio-economic and socio-cultural trajectories.
Among the questions that interest us are:
How has an extractive past influenced the development of contemporary territories?
How are extractive dynamics structured over time?
What continuities and differences exist between centre-periphery relations over the last two hundred years?
How has the appearance of new extractive frontiers changed the function of a territory?
How have the extractive dynamics of the past established groups and actors that continue to play a relevant role in the production of space?
The session is particularly interested in, but not limited to, European territories that have had an extractive present or past, in order to understand how this has influenced their development.
Our intention is to establish an interdisciplinary community from this session in order to continue the debate and possibly produce a series of collective publications.