IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/spr/jenvss/v4y2014i1p7-16.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Scale, shale, and the state: political ecologies and legal geographies of shale gas development in Pennsylvania

Author

Listed:
  • Eleanor Andrews
  • James McCarthy

Abstract

Recent work on legal geographies has arguably paid far too little attention to the environment as both an object of governance and a terrain of struggle with respect to the law. Conversely, political ecology as a field, with its focus on informal and extra-legal dynamics, has arguably engaged too little with the legal geographies that are central to environmental conflicts in many locations. This paper examines and theorizes the legal geographies that have been essential elements of the recent boom in extraction of natural gas from the Marcellus Shale in Pennsylvania. Specifically, it examines the ways in which laws and the authority of the state more broadly have been changed, deployed, and invoked, particularly through the passage of Act 13, to enable the extraction of the gas in the shale and its circulation as a viable commodity. This analysis of the relevant multiscalar legal geographies illustrates the productivity of a more direct engagement between political ecology on one hand, and legal geography on the other. Copyright AESS 2014

Suggested Citation

  • Eleanor Andrews & James McCarthy, 2014. "Scale, shale, and the state: political ecologies and legal geographies of shale gas development in Pennsylvania," Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences, Springer;Association of Environmental Studies and Sciences, vol. 4(1), pages 7-16, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:spr:jenvss:v:4:y:2014:i:1:p:7-16
    DOI: 10.1007/s13412-013-0146-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s13412-013-0146-8
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1007/s13412-013-0146-8?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Gavin Bridge, 2008. "Global production networks and the extractive sector: governing resource-based development," Journal of Economic Geography, Oxford University Press, vol. 8(3), pages 389-419, May.
    2. Ian Bannon & Paul Collier, 2003. "Natural Resources and Violent Conflict : Options and Actions," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 15047.
    3. Graham Davis, 2011. "The resource drag," International Economics and Economic Policy, Springer, vol. 8(2), pages 155-176, June.
    4. Sachs, Jeffrey D. & Warner, Andrew M., 2001. "The curse of natural resources," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 45(4-6), pages 827-838, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Li, Boying & Zheng, Mingbo & Zhao, Xinxin & Chang, Chun-Ping, 2021. "An assessment of the effect of partisan ideology on shale gas production and the implications for environmental regulations," Economic Systems, Elsevier, vol. 45(3).
    2. Middleton, Richard S. & Gupta, Rajan & Hyman, Jeffrey D. & Viswanathan, Hari S., 2017. "The shale gas revolution: Barriers, sustainability, and emerging opportunities," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 199(C), pages 88-95.
    3. Matthew Fry & Christian Brannstrom & Trey Murphy, 2015. "How Dallas became frack free: hydrocarbon governance under neoliberalism," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 47(12), pages 2591-2608, December.
    4. Fry, Matthew & Brannstrom, Christian, 2017. "Emergent patterns and processes in urban hydrocarbon governance," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 383-393.
    5. Sébastien Chailleux, 2020. "Making the subsurface political: How enhanced oil recovery techniques reshaped the energy transition," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 38(4), pages 733-750, June.
    6. Kelly Kay, 2016. "Breaking the bundle of rights: Conservation easements and the legal geographies of individuating nature," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 48(3), pages 504-522, March.
    7. O’Donnell, Tayanah, 2019. "Contrasting land use policies for climate change adaptation: A case study of political and geo-legal realities for Australian coastal locations," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    8. Julia Sizek, 2018. "California’s Groundwater Regime: The Cadiz Case," Resources, MDPI, vol. 7(1), pages 1-7, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mehrdad Vahabi, 2017. "A critical survey of the resource curse literature through the appropriability lens," CEPN Working Papers 2017-14, Centre d'Economie de l'Université de Paris Nord.
    2. Gritsenko, Daria & Efimova, Elena, 2020. "Is there Arctic resource curse? Evidence from the Russian Arctic regions," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 65(C).
    3. Verme, Paolo & Schuettler, Kirsten, 2021. "The impact of forced displacement on host communities: A review of the empirical literature in economics," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 150(C).
    4. James, Alexander, 2015. "The resource curse: A statistical mirage?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 114(C), pages 55-63.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:jenvss:v:4:y:2014:i:1:p:7-16. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.