Nationalist Imaginaries and Political Mobilization Against Global Extractive Capital

Abstract

Contemporary scholarship on neoliberal globalization and countermovement tends to focus on the global dimension of political struggles. The role of nationalist imaginaries in mobilizing grievances against neoliberal globalization receives little attention in this literature. This article probes these ideas using the case of NCBD, known for its political struggles against global extractive capital in Bangladesh. Drawing on critical globalization scholarship vis-à-vis the power of the state and the ability of countermovements to contest neoliberal globalization, the article analyzes how NCBD’s political imaginaries center on nature, nation, and the state to achieve its movement agenda. Based on qualitative data derived from a set of interviews and relevant organizational documents, it demonstrates the relevance of national scale as a movement site in mediating local and global questions for emancipatory political struggles. It explains how NCBD articulates nationalist imaginaries to mobilize a political vision of the “national” in an era of neoliberal globalism.

Keywords

globalization neoliberalism periphery social movements sociology

Introduction

Energy resources play an enormous role in nation-building projects. As national economies are increasingly being incorporated into global markets, and neoliberal policies are shaping the terms of this engagement, struggles over these resources have intensified. Civil society groups frequently contest the policies favored by the state and corporate capital and mobilize popular movements against them (Bebbington, 2012; Kirsch, 2014). These groups articulate new meanings of “nation” and “nature” in the age of the “global.” They seek to redefine resource development and offer a more complex understanding of national sovereignty and national interests (Kohl and Farthing, 2012; Perreault and Valdivia, 2010).

This article analyzes the political struggle over the privatization of resource development in Bangladesh. It focuses on the activism of the National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Mineral Resources, Power and Ports (NCBD), a key partner in a successful anti-mining movement in Phulbari, a town in the northwestern region of Bangladesh, strengthening and scaling up the movement from the local to the national level. It began in 2005 when a British mining corporation (GCM Resources Plc) planned to build a large export-oriented open pit coal mine. NCBD framed the mining project as a deal that marginalized Bangladesh’s national interests (NCBD, 2005). It demanded that Bangladesh’s Energy Ministry formulate a national coal policy to prohibit open pit mining and export of mineral resources. It also opposed the idea of a foreign mining corporation as sole owner of any resource development project. Although anti-mining mobilizations at the local and national level forced the Bangladeshi government to shelve the project in late 2006, the mining company did not abandon the project. Recently, it teamed up with several Chinese companies to lobby the Bangladeshi government to permit its coal mine project (GCM Resources, 2018). It is pertinent to note here that since 2016, China and its corporate capital have gained significant influence in Bangladesh, as Bangladesh is a significant South Asian partner in China’s One Belt One Road project. NCBD’s oppositional discourses broadened the scope of the anti-mining movement by mediating the local and the global and articulating nationalist imaginaries to resist neoliberal globalization manifested in the nexus of the state and global extractive capital.

In this article, I am interested in how NCBD articulates its political imaginaries centering on nature, nation, and state to achieve its movement agenda more generally. I engage with critical globalization scholarship vis-à-vis the power of the state and the possibility of countermovement¹ to contest and resist neoliberal global capitalism.

Contemporary scholarship on neoliberal globalization and countermovements tends to focus on the global dimension of political struggles and emphasizes the role of global civil society (Castells, 2008; Kaldor, 2003). Some scholars argue the emergence of cosmopolitan global democracy is an effective strategy to resist the unintended consequences of neoliberal globalization (Archibugi et al., 1998; Beck, 2005; Held, 1998). Others say nationalist political imaginaries have been transformed into global ones, emphasizing the emergence of new ideational formations assembled around the global (Steger and Wilson, 2012; Steger et al., 2012). In other words, they consider the possibility of emancipatory politics at the level of global rather than national. Yet this approach underestimates the role of progressive politics within a nation-state, and nationalist imaginaries used to mobilize grievances against neoliberal globalization receive little attention (Johnston and Laxer, 2003; Laxer and Halperin, 2003). I draw on NCBD’s discourses on resource development to engage with this literature.

The analysis demonstrates the relevance of the national context for progressive political struggles confronting neoliberal globalization. Bangladesh’s peripheral location in the globalized economy and its dependent form of development suggest that national-level factors mediate the local and the global in the creation of countermovement discourses. I argue that the state, nation, and nationalism play a critical role in organizing countermovements. I show how NCBD emphasizes “national” issues to mediate the conflict between the global and the local, one example of which is the anti-mining movement in Phulbari, by articulating new political imaginaries (i.e. nationalist rhetorics). In so doing, it mobilizes a political vision of the “national” in the era of neoliberal globalism.

The rest of the article is organized into four sections. It begins with an overview of the scholarly debate on neoliberal globalization, nation-state, and countermovement. This is followed by a brief note on my method and data sources. Section three explains the emergence of NCBD as a countermovement challenging the nexus of the state and corporate capital in resource development. Sections four contains empirical evidence, specifically NCBD’s discourses vis-à-vis nationalist imaginaries on resource development. It concludes with a brief discussion of the main findings.

Neoliberal Globalization, Nation-State, and Countermovement

Neoliberal globalization² serves a double purpose: on the one hand, it advances the interests of transnational corporate capital, and on the other hand, it creates conditions for the emergence of anti-systemic countermovements challenging the desires of transnational capital and its allies (Carroll, 2010; Evans, 2008; Sklair, 2001).

Some globalization theorists emphasize the power of global civil society (GCS) to mobilize countermovements against global capital and its driving forces (see Kaldor et al., 2003; Keane, 2003). GCS³ is viewed as a central actor in bringing together oppositional forces to launch coordinated countermovements against states and global forces. This literature tends to circumvent state-centered political activism because some scholars think the market logics of neoliberal globalization (or “globalization-from-above”) have instrumentalized nation-states to implement a set of policies: privatization, free-trade, fiscal austerity, and competitiveness. Therefore, GCS (or “globalization-from-below”) is “a vehicle for the transnational promotion of substantive democracy as counter-weight to neo-liberalism” (Falk, 1998: 108). It aims for global rule of law, global justice, and global empowerment; the goal is to civilize or democratize globalization (Kaldor, 2003: 8). Beck (2005) highlights the significance of a new politics away from the nation-state and argues that a culture of globality, globalized modernization, and global problems (e.g. manufactured risks) has become a tangible foundation of social life, and the nation-state as a frame of reference is not equipped to deal with the issue.

GCS scholars suggest the end of the nation-state marked the beginning of a post-national world (also see Appadurai, 1996). Other scholars consider this claim is an exaggeration; sovereign states, they say, exercise considerable power to nurture and guide neoliberal transformation (Aronowitz, 2003; James, 2002; Sassen, 2006). Going against the widely held perspective that the state has a reduced role in the neoliberal era, Harvey (2009: 56) argues that neoliberalism is strengthened by the state’s engagement, while Klein (2007) persuasively shows that in the postcolonial world, the state is a critical agent in shaping the nexus between global institutions and corporate power.

The GCS-based theorizing of the political possibility of countermovement in the era of neoliberal globalism has been criticized by scholars on both theoretical and empirical grounds. Tarrow contends GCS scholars fail to adequately address the relationship between states and international institutions: “Sustaining collective action across borders on the part of people who seldom see one another and who lack embedded relations of trust is difficult. [Moreover], the repertoires of contention grow out of and lodged in local and national context” (2005: 7; emphasis added). Neo-Gramscian scholarship suggests that movements organized by dominant GCS groups often work to support “the dominance of capital in national politics, in international relations, in global governance and in mass communications” (Carroll, 2010: 206). In a similar vein, Ford (2003: 129) cautions that although GCS is “a terrain for both legitimizing and challenging global governance,” it works within a particular framework in which specific structural and discursive forces shape movement agenda. GCS movements, therefore, may contribute to “reproducing rather than challenging” the global hegemony of corporate capital (also see Conway, 2013: 67–69).

Globalization theorists who advocate for GCS-based politics tend to downplay the role of nation and nationalism in galvanizing political imaginaries, but these are critical elements of a growing number of social movements fighting neoliberal globalization. As Calhoun (2007) argues, GCS scholars underestimate the values and privileges of nation and nationalism as categories of identity and politics. They tend to emphasize a binary context, globalization versus localization, and this, Calhoun suggests, “neglects the importance of states as arenas for democratic struggles, and agents for contesting an economic power which has not ceased to be centralized as it has become global” (2007: 100). Therefore, the state, nationalism, and the discourses of nationalist political imaginary will remain central issues in our globalized world.

In her analysis of the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico, Johnston emphasizes the material impacts of neoliberal policies in Chiapas’ political economy and shows that these policies affected local subsistence agriculture, promoting “capital-intensive commodity production at the expense of local, democratic control over land and other resources” (2003: 87). The Zapatista movement was grounded on this local/national political economy. Although Zapatista rebels contested neoliberal globalism, they saw the state as “necessary for creating conditions for socio-economic equity and self-determination” and their vision was to have “a state that is democratic and responsive to citizens” (Johnston, 2003: 87).

Considering these limits of GCS-based emancipatory politics, Laxer and Halperin ask two pertinent questions: where should resistance be focused and where does political action work best in opposing globalism? Instead of fighting at the global level, they say “strong efforts at national and local levels” can produce significant results, while cross-border solidarities depend on “the ability of nationally and locally mobilized forces to forge links with similarly mobilized forces abroad” (2003: 15). Similarly, Smith suggests that although alter-globalization movements target global political forces to contest the globalization of economic power, “the state in its national incarnation” remains a critical target of these movements at both local and global scales (2009: 9). Movements rooted in local and national contexts can establish “strong cords of political connectedness” to mobilize against neoliberal globalization (Ratner, 2010: 275). Drawing on Anderson’s seminal work on nationalism, Campbell and Hall (2015) argue that even in the era of globalization and cosmopolitan hype, the nation-state is still a place, which provides its citizens a sense of belonging. For them, nationalism (or nationalist imaginaries) is a significant source of state-centered political struggle.

Two key aspects of the political resistance to neoliberal global capitalism are movement site and movement imaginary, with think globally and act locally – a popular vision of civil society groups globally, nationally, and locally (Saul, 2006). Notwithstanding the sporadic successes of such movements, Harvey (2005) is cautious about celebrating their victory. For him, a locally rooted political vision cannot move forward to achieve broader political objectives. By the same token, Saul (2006: 45–51) cautions us not to become fascinated with the global-local binary. He draws attention to movement imaginary—a strategic political frame used to articulate movement discourses and attract popular support from a wider population. An effective resistance requires two interrelated frames (imaginaries). The first is a democratic imaginary. The goal is the democratization of public policymaking to achieve accountability. The democratic imaginary aims to build a solid foundation for a countermovement, but it will not achieve much unless it is coupled with the second imaginary—a nationalist/socialist imaginary, which advocates for greater state control to counteract the power and authority of global capital.

Method and Data Sources

This article is based on qualitative data derived from a set of in-depth interviews and various relevant documents. I interviewed a group of NCBD activists in 2013 and 2014. Its members included left-wing political parties, academics, retired bureaucrats, and cultural and political activists. I recruited participants from each of these categories and conducted 32 interviews.⁴

To begin the interview process, I made a list of political parties who were members of NCBD and of the representatives of each party who were members of NCBD’s central governing body. I asked a senior leader of each political party to participate in my research and ensured that the participant was an active member of NCBD’s central governing body. I included members who did not represent any political party but were members of the central governing body. I interviewed 11 members, including both party (8) and non-party (3) members.

Based on a careful reading of newspapers reports on NCBD’s activism, I prepared a list of cultural and political activists, academics, and retired bureaucrats who regularly participated in NCBD’s programs. After preliminary discussions with several activists at the start of my work, I used a standard qualitative sampling technique—snowballing process—and derived a list of potential participants. I conducted 21 interviews; of these, 17 were with NCBD activists involved with various Dhaka-based cultural and political groups. The rest of the interviews were with academics (2) and retired bureaucrats (2).

I used an open-ended interview guide to conduct the interviews. The guide included various issues, such as the background and the formation of NCBD, its engagement with the anti-mining movement in Phulbari, its broader movement agenda and tactics, outcomes and challenges of the movement, and participants’ views on several contentious issues, such as the role of foreign investment and international financial institutions, policymaking processes in the resource development sector, the integration of peripheral countries (e.g. Bangladesh) into the global economy and the protection of national interests, the role of the state, and the efficacy of political movements at the national level in an era of neoliberal global capitalism.

In addition to these interviews, I gathered evidence from other sources. These included: (a) pamphlets and other movement-related literature of NCBD; (b) legal and policy documents of various government agencies. I collected these documents from various sources: the central office of NCBD, the archives of Dhaka University’s Central Library, and the Bangladesh Government Press archive.

NCBD as a Countermovement

NCBD emerged as a civil society group opposing the neoliberal transformation of Bangladesh’s energy policies and aiming to persuade the state to safeguard “national interests” in a changing global and national economic context. This transformation began in the 1980s, when the World Bank financed several projects to improve the technical and institutional capacity of the state-owned energy company and its various agencies. Among its projects was the first comprehensive study of the energy sector in Bangladesh in 1982; the study’s recommendations included engaging foreign private capital and creating an export-oriented policy (World Bank, 1982, 1999). Between 1983 and 1990, the World Bank attempted to reform the existing legal and policy framework which assigned exclusive rights of oil and gas exploration to the state. Eventually, the policy of national ownership, adopted in 1974–1975, was abandoned, and market-oriented, corporate-friendly policies were adopted.

Following the Bank’s recommendations, the Bangladeshi government brought in a new economic policy regime in the early 1990s to create a favorable business environment for foreign corporations. New investment and industrial policies were introduced to increase the role of market forces, most notably to attract more foreign direct investment (FDI) in various sectors (World Bank, 1993, 1995). The Bangladeshi government also formulated a national petroleum policy (1993) and national energy policy (1996) to create a policy framework for resource development. A key objective was to increase private sector participation. This was a major shift in national policy framework: 20 years earlier, in 1974–1975, Bangladesh had nationalized oil and gas exploration enterprises and bought five gas fields from an international oil company, Shell, to protect national interests and ensure the long-term energy security of the country.⁵ Although a state-owned petroleum and mineral exploration and development company, Petrobangla, continued to discover and develop gas fields, the new policies favored foreign corporations.

Two critical events in 1997 led to NCBD’s activism. First, a massive blowout occurred in a gas field operated by an American company, Occidental Petroleum Corporation. Second, another American company, Unocal Corporation was pushing for a deal to develop a gas field discovered by the state-owned company. In this case, the goal was to create the necessary infrastructure to export natural gas to India. These two events grabbed the attention of leftist political parties. They organized a national convention, “Bangladesh’s Oil and Gas Resources and National Interest,” in Dhaka on 18 August 1998 (Shaptahik Ekota, 1998a). In his keynote presentation, a Marxist economist from Dhaka University explained how production sharing contracts signed with various international oil companies failed to maximize national interests. He argued that the terms and conditions favored foreign corporations, and the deals damaged the national petroleum exploration company (Akash, 1998). Convention participants demanded that the government formulate a national plan of action (Shaptahik Ekota, 1998b). One outcome of the convention was the formation of NCBD in December 1998.

Broadly speaking, NCBD targets neoliberal energy policies as a vehicle to articulate nationalist imaginaries vis-à-vis mineral resources (nature and nation). Its manifesto succinctly sums up its main demands:

I) Mineral resources of Bangladesh belong to the people of the country. Hence, for any kind of development of these resources, 100 percent ownership of the people over these resources has to be guaranteed. II) The objective of extraction and development of these mineral resources will be to ensure its best use in the productive sector for dynamic economic growth. III) Since these resources are limited and non-renewable, export of these resources, in any form, cannot be allowed. IV) Existing national institutions have to be strengthened to increase their capability to undertake resource exploration and development programs. Effective steps have to be taken to develop necessary skilled human resources and experts. V) Extraction and development of mineral resources have to be done without destroying environment, lands, and livelihoods. VI) A comprehensive energy policy has to be formulated in alignment with these demands. Necessary laws must be enacted to implement this policy. (NCBD, 2009)

NCBD wants the state to play a more active and pragmatic role in a changing economic context, whereby globally peripheral countries like Bangladesh are being integrated into the global capitalist system. Instead of making policies institutionalizing the role of foreign corporate capital in resource development, NCBD urges the state to assume a central role, managing the country’s strategic resources by strengthening the institutional capabilities of national organizations (i.e. state-owned resource development entities). The realization of these demands, NCBD argues, would maximize the benefits of petroleum and mineral resources. Under current corporate-friendly arrangements, they claim, transnational companies take the major share of precious resources. While proponents of neoliberal globalization (e.g. the Bretton Woods Institutions, policymakers, business elites) advocate for more pro-market transformations and the reduced role of the state, NCBD calls for the state to balance corporate and national interests. NCBD’s movement agenda, as evident in the above demands, articulates a different political vision, re-establishing the centrality of the nation-state to advance a “pro-people” political agenda. It reimagines the power of the state to materialize those demands in the neoliberal era. Even though key international financial institutions (the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund) have weakened the state and altered its legal and policy framework, in the view of NCBD, it remains (or could become) a powerful entity. Progressive politics should not discount the state as an agent of social change, notwithstanding the effects of global capitalism. While the state is an agent of national politics, however, it does not always need to respond to popular mobilizations. Rather, under historically specific conjunctural conditions, it can respond to popular demands that counter the imperatives of global capital.⁶

NCBD’s Resistance to Neoliberal Globalization

In this section, I focus on two aspects of countermovement against neoliberal globalization: the movement site and the use of persuasive political imaginaries to organize popular mobilizations. I shift my attention to NCBD activists to uncover how they articulate discourses on nature (i.e. petroleum and mineral resources) and nation vis-à-vis these two parameters to mobilize a countermovement against forces of neoliberal corporate globalization (i.e. foreign capital and the globalized extractive industry).

Movement Site

As mentioned earlier, many globalization theorists argue that the nation-state and its sovereignty are in crisis; both global capital and various global institutional mechanisms have undermined its efficacy and relevance. NCBD activists acknowledge this changing context. However, they suggest that, far from losing its relevance, the nation (and the state) can assert its power against global capital and its internal and external allies. An activist explains:

As long as imperialism is present as an integral part of a globalized market, an oppressed community is also present as a nation and nation-state. Communities living within a sovereign political boundary can claim general and specific interests of their people. These interests are intertwined with their democratic aspirations of a nation-state. If we consider these aspirations as a collective national consciousness to assert national interest, we will see that this is very much vibrant and relevant in many societies in the world. (DHA Interview # 3)

In these comments, the NCBD activist clearly emphasizes the significance of the nation-state to address the ramifications of neoliberal globalization entangled with the politics of imperialism. The state has the power (both institutional and organizational) to address grievances, and it is the responsibility of the state to uphold its national interests while engaging with supranational forces. Therefore, for NCBD activists, the state is the center and target of their alter-globalization countermovement. Another activist says:

The state takes the full responsibility to implement the agenda of global corporate capital. It reforms its policies to safeguard corporate interests. When we protest against the mining company [AECB], the state applies repressive measures to protect corporate interests. Therefore, we must fight against the state. Without facing the state, we cannot fight against global corporate capital. (DHA Interview # 2)

State-centered countermovement at the national level is not only aimed at confronting global capital and its neoliberal policy agenda. NCBD activists also confront the state for another significant reason. Each state has a unique socio-economic and political context. Therefore, its integration into the global capitalist system has context-specific outcomes requiring state intervention. As the following comment emphasizes, the most significant context is the class structure, as it mediates the outcome of a state’s integration into the global capitalist system:

There is still national territorial boundary of each sovereign state. Every state has its own legal and institutional structures. It has specific social and economic policy framework. It has its own security forces. It has visible existence despite enormous power of global capital, metropolitan states, and global institutions. To achieve our goals, we have to deal with these [forces] at the national level. To make tangible changes in the nature [and functions] of the state in the neoliberal era, we have to achieve a lot at the national level. Each society has specific cultural traits [which shape its class structure and state-society relations]. We must consider these issues. . . . A global movement is unable to pay attention to these issues. It is unable to fight against the state and local ruling elites who play the decisive role. (DHA Interview # 5)

To this, another activist adds: “The bourgeois political parties which come to power in Bangladesh use that power to protect the interests of domestic and foreign looters. Any movement for protection of national resources must make this visible to the public” (DHA Interview # 21).

Although NCBD activists are aware of the significance of organizing a broader global movement (i.e. alter-globalization or global justice movements), they suggest that only a proper identification of one’s enemies can determine the appropriate site of emancipatory political struggle. In the case of the Phulbari coalmine, for example, although the local problem was rooted in global issues (e.g. market forces and the power of corporate capital), the comprador class within ruling elites (rent-seeking political and bureaucratic elites) and state apparatuses at the national level (captured by the rent-seekers) were the most significant aspects of the problem.

In alliance with powerful external (global) forces, national (local) actors are the authors of the neoliberal policy agenda in Bangladesh. Therefore, as the above two quotations show, movements at the national scale can meaningfully engage with these forces to protect the people’s interests (jonogoner swartha). NCBD activists argue that without organizing a powerful countermovement at the national level, there can be no solid oppositional movement against corporate globalization at the global level. Moreover, movements at the national level, they suggest, involve the specific character of state-society relations, as mentioned above, and this often loses its place in a global movement. For NCBD activists, global movements such as World Social Forum are less effective to achieve real change. One activist observes:

The power center must be targeted. Now there is no World State that it can be a legitimate target of global movements. As a result, we must target the state which is the center of power till now. What can be learned from the Occupy Movement in this regard? Although anarchists [organizers of the Occupy Movement] do not consider it necessary to confront the state, the Occupy Movement has proved it [state-centered movement] is necessary because it is the state which applies force on challengers. (DHA Interview # 19)

In short, NCBD’s movement agenda articulates a nationalist imaginary, whereby the nation-state is the key site of resistance against neoliberal globalization. Unlike the claims of many globalization theorists who give primacy to global-scale struggles, NCBD is very much focused on struggles at the national level to challenge those state policies, which, they claim, are designed to fulfill the desires of global capital and its local compradors. Although in the view of NCBD, states in the global South often allow external imperialist forces⁷ to advance their geo-political and corporate interests, the state remains a critical institution for its people to realize their demands and aspirations. For example, the Bangladeshi state was established when its people sacrificed their lives in a bloody liberation war with Pakistan. They have a legitimate desire to make the state their own. In other words, the state should fulfill their needs as promised in the 1971 liberation war.⁸ To ensure the state protects the needs and interests of the people, NCBD confronts the ruling elites, believing that such engagements (via direct social movement actions) will gradually shape the democratic nature of the state. Any alternative, such as the abandonment of the state as a political site (as many global civil society advocates suggest), is not an option.

Movement Imaginaries

A careful analysis of NCBD’s movement imaginaries clearly reveals a “resource nationalist” popular struggle. Resource nationalism refers to a policy where states either nationalize resource development projects run by domestic or foreign private corporations or assert more control and ownership of such projects and reduce the share of private corporations (Haslam and Heidrich, 2016). NCBD activists are very cautious in their use of this concept, however, and in this section, I explain why.

NCBD avoids the use of “resource nationalism” in its movement discourses. To refer to its key demands, NCBD uses a different phrase, “people’s ownership” (jonogoner malikana). Although resource nationalism (i.e. more state control of resource development) is often used as a synonym for the assertion of national interests, NCBD’s disdain for this phrase is connected to its desire to articulate a more nuanced discourse on the politics of neoliberal resource development in the global South. An NCBD activist explains the reason:

Resource nationalism is a derogatory term used by the proponents of neoliberal globalization to delegitimize [civil society] movements, which challenge MNC’s monopoly control of national resources in the global South and seek to reclaim people’s (i.e., state) ownership. Transnational corporations and their local and global allies characterize these mobilizations as a threat to development. (DHA Interview # 16)

In effect, NCBD replaces “state ownership” with “people’s ownership.” Although the categories signify the same phenomenon (resource nationalism), NCBD distinguishes its movement from nationalist political movements. For NCBD, the term “nationalist” has a built-in bias for nationalist struggles that aim to strengthen the power of the nationalist bourgeois class in the guise of national development and the emancipation of the masses. If the state is not democratic and state machineries are captured by the dominant bourgeois class, the demand for increasing “state ownership” (i.e. resource nationalism) will be futile. Keeping this pitfall of “resource nationalism” in mind, NCBD is very cautious when characterizing its movement agenda (DHA Interview # 2, 6).

NCBD’s use of jonogoner malikana (people’s ownership), as explained above, is connected to its radical perspective of the state and class structure in postcolonial societies. Influenced by the postcolonial writings of Frantz Fanon (2004), this perspective offers a trenchant critique of the nationalist politics of ruling elites and nationalist bourgeois class in Bangladesh. The following observation by an NCBD activist highlights this postcolonial perspective:

Our views of ‘people’s ownership’ do not promote nationalist politics. Nationalist politics in postcolonial societies refer to the power and authority of national bourgeoisie class. Nationalist politics strives to establish hegemony and domination of the national bourgeoisie class in all spheres of politics and economy. We do not support any form of nationalist politics because we do not believe that national bourgeois class will ensure the rights of the people. Their interests are closely tied to those of transnational capitalist class. In state policies, they prefer foreign private ownership to state ownership, because MNCs will employ them as their domestic junior partners. (DHA Interview # 10)

NCBD activists argue that their movement can be cautiously labeled a nationalist movement insofar as it opposes imperialist aggression by foreign corporations. However, as highlighted in the above quotation, they are equally critical of the role of the national bourgeois class (i.e. dominant groups of industrialists and entrepreneurs) which, for them, can no longer function independently to contribute to national economic growth and prosperity because, given the transnational context of global capital, they are almost certain to function as its agents.⁹ In other words, they are part of a transnational corporate class which, as Robinson argues, colonizes “the state in new ways” (2014: 42). Since their interests are tied to those of global corporate capital, any threat to the latter prevents them from supporting radical social movements aiming to change state policies to ensure better use of national (petroleum and mineral) resources, and this will ultimately benefit the national bourgeois class.¹⁰ NCBD’s perspective on the national bourgeois class echoes Amin’s observation: “The failed ruling classes in the countries of the global South have largely accepted their role of subaltern compradors” (2008: 74).

NCBD activists make a nuanced distinction between “people’s ownership” and “state ownership.” For them, these are separate phrases in terms of their political spirit in state-society relations. Unlike state ownership, people’s ownership is contingent on having the views of the masses, not the ruling elites, reflected in policymaking on resource development. An activist says, “In fact, ensuring people’s participation in the policy-making process is a critical step. For the time being (until there is a new state with a radical [socialist] political agenda), this is what we can call ‘people’s ownership’” (DHA Interview # 7).

NCBD’s preference for “people’s ownership” (jonogoner malikana) is also rooted in its Marxist political vision, which distrusts and questions the politics of nationalism as a viable vehicle of societal transformation.¹¹ NCBD activists criticize nationalism and its violent form of political practices:

In the Bangladeshi context, nationalist movements, which are the successors of the Bengali Nationalist Movement of the 1960s that led to Bangladesh’s liberation war with Pakistan in 1971 adopt exclusionary principles. Such movements popularize dislike of heterogeneity and diversity of cultures and political identities. State repression of the indigenous peoples in the Chittagong Hill Tracts in the name of the unity of a homogenous nation-state of the Bengalis is a glaring example of the violent outcome of nationalist movements. (DHA Interview # 20)

NCBD uses the phrase “people’s ownership” to avoid negative connotations of the politics of nationalism, as evident in the above observation. This phrase—with its imagined citizenry of “the people” within the nation-state—articulates nationalist sentiments vis-à-vis resource development, whereby state-owned public enterprises can ensure the greater public good.

NCBD’s nationalist imaginaries expose the contradiction between two opposing practices of the political economy of development: first, Bangladesh’s structural dependence on financial support from the Bretton Woods Institutions and other international development agencies, which are united in pushing for policies shaped by “the Washington Consensus”¹² to create an opening for export-oriented foreign investments; second, popular nationalist imaginaries of the greater power, control, and capability of public institutions.

Discussion and Conclusion

Natural resources play a significant role in the nation-making process. As Watts puts it, these resources “always invoke the spatial lexicon in which the nation figures prominently” (2001: 206, my emphasis). Accordingly, natural resources are strategic material resources that help to construct nationalist imaginaries (Apter, 2005; Coronil, 1997). Although international financial institutions consider “resource nationalism” a threat to foreign capital, critical scholarship on political struggles against globalization and the extractive industry connects it to a complex relationship of nature, nation, and nationalist imaginaries (Kohl and Farthing, 2012; Perreault, 2013; Perreault and Valdivia, 2010).

Natural resources serve as a springboard for discourses of nationalism that react to the domination of global capital and its local partners in the global South. Neoliberal economic policies facilitate foreign investment in resource development and prioritize an export-oriented business model in natural resource governance. This type of resource governance creates a multilayered relationship between natural resources and nationalist imaginaries, such that the extraction of natural resources becomes “integral to the production of nationalist ideologies” (Perreault, 2013: 70). Resource extraction is, as Huber contends, “central to the production of narratives of nationalism and belonging” (2015: 330). This nationalist imaginary has two implications. On the one hand, neoliberal states and global corporations can rationalize the dispossession and environmental destruction required for economic growth. Many resource-rich states in the global South also invoke the rhetoric of nationalism to legitimize increased state power in resource extraction to move away from neoliberal policies of resource governance (Childs and Hearn, 2017; Emel et al., 2011). On the other hand, civil society groups can organize countermovements against the power of foreign corporations favored by neoliberal states by invoking political imaginaries such as national sovereignty and people’s ownership (Perreault and Valdivia, 2010). NCBD is a good example of the latter.

Scholars who view the “global” as the most effective scale of political struggles for the welfare of the masses consider that the state has become transnationalized, and in the traditional sense of its functions, the state is no longer a center for political decision-making that is favorable to national interests (Habermas, 2001; Hardt and Negri, 2004).¹³ Therefore, as de Sousa Santos argues,

“the object of the struggle (be it a decision of the WTO, a World Bank policy, or a TNC’s decision to explore for oil in indigenous territory) is outside the national space and . . . the scale of the struggle, from this viewpoint, must be increasingly global”

(2005: 53–54).

NCBD’s discourses vis-à-vis movement site and movement imaginary remind us that many political decision-making processes on, for example, how to deal with a WTO provision, or World Bank’s conditionalities, or a resource extraction project by a transnational corporation, are finalized at the national level by the state and its ruling elites. Prioritizing a global scale of protest does not make sense. It limits our understanding of social change dynamics. NCBD’s engagement with coal development reinforces the idea of social movement scholars (e.g. Tarrow, 2005) that when movement repertoires are rooted in local and national contexts, there is a greater possibility that a countermovement can successfully confront its enemies by targeting the national government and deploying popular nationalism as a mobilization tactic.

As I have shown in this article, NCBD strongly opposes the involvement of transnational corporations in resource development and advocates greater state control (people’s ownership) over these resources. Its movement agenda and discourses tend to delegitimize dominant narratives of the state and capital. The meaning of these demands is rooted in the organizational character of NCBD as a civil society group. Its left/progressive political agenda seeks to reinvigorate national sovereignty to protect the people’s interests. It is committed to articulating counter-hegemonic discourses by questioning dominant worldviews on resource extraction and development. It asks the state not to align with global capitalist interests in specific local instances, as in Phulbari. The struggle over resource development, thus, combines local and national issues related to global capital’s drive. In other words, resource politics in Bangladesh reflect contested discourses of nature, nation, nationalism, and the state.

For the most part, scholars sympathetic to alter-globalization movements emphasize either a “global” or “local” rather than a “national” scale, and this emphasis elides national political imaginaries. However, as NCBD’s case shows, countermovements rely on nationalist imaginaries to attack dominant forces of neoliberal globalization. As Steger and Wilson argue, “the ‘global’ does not simply erase the ‘local’ or the ‘national’ but the former binds the latter more strongly to its own meaning orbit” (2012: 450). My findings corroborate this perspective. NCBD’s critical diagnosis of the discourses and policies of neoliberal globalism encourage anti-capitalist activists to articulate new nationalist political imaginaries. Its framing of local and national movements is influenced by these imaginaries. In effect, it contests “global” issues by placing “national/local” into the broader context of neoliberal global capitalism.

NCBD’s struggle can be compared to that of similar countermovements in Latin America where civil society groups strongly oppose foreign corporations and demand greater state control of resource extraction. These movements have a common theme—“complex articulations of citizenship, territory, and nation”; consequently, “natural resources figure into constructions of the nations” (Perreault and Valdivia, 2010). Opposing hegemonic neoliberal policies associated with resource development, these movements present alternative political imaginaries and contest the dominant meaning of “development.” As Perreault and Valdivia aptly put it, “resource struggles are never only about resources. . . . political economy and cultural politics are inseparable in resource conflicts” (2010: 697).

Since the state is a “constitutive element” of global capitalism (Panitch, 1994), NCBD chooses not to avoid or dismiss the state. Its political vision is similar to the vision of those movements within the World Social Forum who advocate strengthening the national sovereignty of the state to implement their political agenda (see Conway, 2013). Such a vision contradicts GCS theorists and activists (even within the World Social Forum) who favor global activism and misrecognize any engagement with the state.

To reiterate, NCBD is a useful case to probe a significant debate in critical globalization studies vis-à-vis movement site and imaginary. While many scholars posit that the “national” is irrelevant as a key imaginary of political struggle, for NCBD, the “national” scale is an important site to mediate political struggles involving local and global issues. In the example of the Phulbari coal mine, land-dependent local communities in Phulbari contested the resource development project of global corporate capital. Once NCBD became involved, it transformed a local place-based community struggle into a broader anti-corporate political struggle in which both local and global were implicated. In doing so, it questioned the state-corporate capital nexus. It demanded the state assume its proper role—protecting the interests of its people. As the Phulbari case demonstrates, the discursive and political struggle of NCBD underscores that the nationalist imaginary remains a valuable component of political struggles in the neoliberal era.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to my research participants in Dhaka who graciously shared their time. They patiently accommodated my requests for often lengthy conversations on globalization, resource governance, and political struggles. John Hannigan, Josée Johnston, Erik Schneiderhan, and Zaheer Baber provided much needed intellectual support. Their input shaped the article’s theoretical and empirical analysis. They were very generous in agreeing to read various drafts of this article and offer incisive comments. I am also thankful to two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments, which certainly improved the quality of the article. I also gratefully acknowledge Dr Elizabeth Thompson for her excellent copyediting service.

Funding

The author gratefully acknowledge the financial support he received from various institutions at the University of Toronto: School of Graduate Studies, Faculty of Arts and Science, Munk School of Global Affairs, and the Department of Sociology.

ORCID iD

M. Omar Faruque

Notes

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