Joseph Murphy
  • Home
  • CV
  • Projects
  • Topics
    • Learning lessons from natural resource conflicts
    • Improving dialogue between science and society
    • Using policy to shape social and technical innovation
    • Governing when power and authority are dispersed
    • Changing consumption patterns in affluent societies
    • Research methodologies and political action
    • Towards a theory of environment and sustainability
  • Books
    • Regulatory Realities: The Implementation and Impact of Industrial Environmental Regulation
    • Ecological Modernisation, a special issue of Geoforum
    • Exploring Sustainable Consumption: Environmental Policy and the Social Sciences
    • Governing the Transatlantic Conflict over Agricultural Biotechnology
    • Governing Technology for Sustainability
    • At The Edge: Walking the Atlantic Coast of Ireland and Scotland
  • All Publications
  • Contact Me

Learning lessons from natural resource conflicts

Natural resource projects are often controversial. This is the case with traditional mining and drilling operations as well as green resource projects like wind farms. I explore such controversies concentrating particularly on why some local people protest and what solutions are possible. In doing so I avoid the concept of NIMBYism (Not In My Back Yard) and focus instead on such things as history, culture, language, ownership and control of resources, justice and competing visions of sustainable development. People’s relationship to place and how communities are positioned in relation to technical, political and economic processes operating at national and global levels are important.

Murphy, J. and Smith, A. (2013) Understanding transition-periphery dynamics: renewable energy in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, Environment and Planning A, Vol. 45, pp. 691-709.

Murphy, J. (2013) Place and exile: resource conflicts and sustainability in Gaelic Ireland and Scotland, Local Environment, Vol. 18, No. 7-8, pp. 801-816.

Murphy, J. (2011) From place to exile, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, Vol. 36, No. 4, pp. 473-478.


Murphy, J. (2009) At The Edge: Walking the Atlantic Coast of Ireland and Scotland, Sandstone Press, Highlands.
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  • Home
  • CV
  • Projects
  • Topics
    • Learning lessons from natural resource conflicts
    • Improving dialogue between science and society
    • Using policy to shape social and technical innovation
    • Governing when power and authority are dispersed
    • Changing consumption patterns in affluent societies
    • Research methodologies and political action
    • Towards a theory of environment and sustainability
  • Books
    • Regulatory Realities: The Implementation and Impact of Industrial Environmental Regulation
    • Ecological Modernisation, a special issue of Geoforum
    • Exploring Sustainable Consumption: Environmental Policy and the Social Sciences
    • Governing the Transatlantic Conflict over Agricultural Biotechnology
    • Governing Technology for Sustainability
    • At The Edge: Walking the Atlantic Coast of Ireland and Scotland
  • All Publications
  • Contact Me