“New Frontiers of Imperial Rentier Capitalism: Legal Regimes of Extraction for a Green Transition”

The so-called green transition in response to the climate crisis provides the backdrop for this discussion on legal regimes of extraction. The minerals required for green transitioning, including in particular for electric vehicles, are known as transition minerals. I will argue that extraction of transition minerals is marked by colonial frontier thinking that is supported and legitimised by international legal norms and institutions. This will be exemplified through legal regimes that enable mineral extraction in the DRC – an ‘old’ frontier – and Greenland – a ‘new’ frontier. These legal regimes regulate access to scarce resources, land and its minerals, and support the concentration of wealth. Access to land and minerals of states like the DRC and Greenland are at the heart of a political-economic inter-national and inter-imperial rivalry. Placing Rosa Luxemburg on imperialism in conversation with Brett Christophers on rentier capitalism, I describe these processes as imperial rentier capitalism.

Dr Christine Schwöbel-Patel is currently an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow based at the Humboldt University Berlin. She is Reader at Warwick Law School and co-Director of the Centre for Critical Legal Studies. Christine is the author of Marketing Global Justice (CUP 2021) and Global Constitutionalism in International Legal Perspective (Brill 2011) and editor of Critical Approaches to International Criminal Law: An Introduction (Routledge 2014). Christine’s current research projects focus on the themes of Imperial Rentier Capitalism and on Trials of Rupture. Both projects concern the relationship between international law, imperialism, and anti-imperialist struggle. Rosa Luxemburg’s work runs like a red line through her research and pedagogy. She will take up a Leverhulme Fellowship in 2023/2024 to continue this research.

Time & Location

13 December 2022 | 05:00 PM - 07:00 PM

INTERACT Center for interdisciplinary peace and conflict research

Altensteintraße 48, 14195 Berlin

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