Catalyzing Local Contention

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Abstract Drawing on the global debates over biofuels and fracking, this chapter develops the core theoretical approach of the book, bringing together insights from contentious politics and political economy scholarship. The chapter details three central mechanisms of mobilization: scale shifts, identity activation, and brokerage. It specifies how key elements of political economy—that is, the conditions of finance and investment, ownership and control, and trade and patterns of exchange across global and local levels—can catalyze those mechanisms of contention. This theory-building chapter brings attention to how competing narratives and strategic discourses around biofuels and fracking were constructed at the global level, through issue linkages, scientific uncertainty, and the role of key symbols in these debates. The chapter thus establishes the basis for analyzing contestation over proposals for biofuels in sub-Saharan Africa and fracking in northern North America in the chapters that follow.