Susan Reynolds Whyte, Guest Editor
Department of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
What is a resource? A quick review of various dictionary definitions includes: ‘Something that one uses to achieve an objective’; ‘a useful or valuable possession or quality of a country, organization, or person’; ‘a source of supply, support, or aid, especially one that can be readily drawn upon when needed’, ‘Something that can be used to help achieve an ‘aim’; ‘an available means’. There are thus two aspects of a resource. It is an asset—a property, quality or endowment. And it has a use, it is a means to an end—to sustain life, to deal with adverse circumstances, to improve conditions, and to create benefits. Briefly, we understand resources as assets mobilized for human purposes. It is the purpose that determines the resource. Something is only a resource in relation to an actual or possible use.
Natural resources are an obvious place to start. We think of them as already existing, as something ‘out there’ in the world that humans can exploit, maintain, deplete or conserve. Because of their potential value, they need management and may be objects of conflict. In northern Uganda, oil has become a powerful example of a natural resource with great potential for both economic gain and environmental risk, needing careful governance (Van Alstine et al. 2014). Researchers have studied other natural resources such as water (Nsubuga et al.), minerals, marble, stones and sand (Rugadya 2020), wildlife (Lenhart 2023), firewood (Miteva et al. 2017), and wild plants (Oryema et al. 2010). Land itself can be considered a natural resource (Meinert and Whyte 2023). And of course, money is the multiple-purpose resource that can facilitate education, health care and so much else (Muhangi 2019).
In this special issue, however, we widen the scope to include intangible resources as well. We consider resources to be both material and immaterial means available to achieve an aim. Resources might be personal capacities, like energy and focus, or they might be cultural, like indigenous knowledge. All kinds of assets can become resources when they have a potential or actual use. Looking at resources in this way raises the question of how specific assets become useful. They are not simply ‘out there’ as ready-made resources. They become resources in a social context that includes on the one hand, their production, cultivation, management and on the other, particular needs or purposes.
This view of resources as ‘becoming’ is central to the approach to natural material resources expounded by Richardson and Weszkalnys. They call for a relational understanding of resources: ‘…the combined examination of the matters, knowledges, infrastructures, and experiences that come together in the appreciation, extraction, processing, and consumption of natural resources’ (2014:8). Their concept of ‘relational assemblages’ captures the ‘practices, expertise, infrastructures, etc.’(ibid.:18) that together make resources. The contributors to this issue follow this general approach, applying it to the study of all kinds of resources. They recognize, as well, that: ‘A multitude of political, economic, and cultural factors contribute to the shifts and disruptions in the way that resources are conceptualized and matter over time (ibid:15)’.