Sticks and stones: Environmental narratives and discursive regulation in the forestry and mining sectors

As visibly extractive industries reliant on the material and semiotic commo dification of nature, forestry and mining have come to be popularly viewed as "environmental pariahs." Yet forestry and mining continue to be successf ully profitable enterprises despite a significant increase in environmental awareness and activism in the latter half of the twentieth century. To und erstand the relative stability and growth of these sectors in the face of o vert contradictions arising from their use of the environment, this article revisits the work of regulation theorists who asked similar questions abou t the persistence and maintenance of capitalism in general. Two case studies are presented-forestry in British Columbia and gold mining in California and Nevada-which demonstrate how the political economy of fo restry and mining is subject to contradictions arising out of the technolog ical and organizational mechanisms through which nature is appropriated dur ing production. Analysis of the case studies shows that the regulation of t hese contradictions is increasingly achieved through the deployment and coo ptation of sustainability narratives. The case studies therefore juxtapose the recent proliferation of sustainability narratives within the forestry a nd mining sectors with the sectors' persistent challenge to concepts of sus tainable development.