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This paper examines the introduction of neoliberal policies in the mining sector in Armenia and the civil society opposition to those policies and practices. While recognizing that neoliberal policies have global reach, the paper examines how neoliberal policies are locally translated, manifested, and resisted in Armenia and analyzes the factors that shape resistance to neoliberal policies. It argues that the anti-mining activists have created new subjectivities and spaces for activism where they resist and challenge neoliberal policies and practices in the mining sector as well as the heretofore accepted formal practices of civil society advocacy and engagement in policy processes. Although the anti-mining activists have not changed the way mining is practiced in Armenia, they have opened up debates around mining, and neoliberal policies more generally, and created new understandings and practices of civic activism and social mobilization in Armenia.

Radical feminist theory and practice has actively questioned power relationships between men, women and people of color as a cornerstone of capitalist development since the 1970s while demonstrating the differential impact of such inequality generating structures and relationships on lives and bodies. Their argument about the process of social reproduction and, especially, the reproduction of labor-power both achieved through the dispossession of the female and (colonial) body and the expropriation of their work (Federici, 2004) is acutely relevant to the analysis of the consequences of the unfolding Global Financial Crisis. Yet, the crisis can be a motivating force for changing the established power relations. Using three different case studies of female initiatives aiming to counteract the imposition of neoliberal attack on their livelihoods in crisis-stricken Greece, the chapter examines how the existing experience of feminist thinking and activism from within and outside of academia, can contribute to the cultivation of affective embodied relations, and building upon the idea of “feminist solidarity” (Mohanty, 2003), in addressing the challenges of the crisis and post-crisis policies.

The mobilisations against the wildfires in Greece (2007) redefined the notion of environmentalism in the country, and it was one of the first examples which showcased the potential of digital media for protests and resistance in the Greek context. At the same time, the global recession strongly affected the environmental politics and policies applied in Greece, indicating threats, risks and areas of conflict (e.g., privatisation of recourses, water, etc.). Following the environmental protests of 2007, this study provides an insight into the case of #Skouries forest and the antimining protests, focussing on the period 2015–2017. The study developed through the analysis of online data (Twitter) which was collected during the period March 2015 to March 2017 (#skouries). This chapter develops an insight into the online networks, coalitions and dominant actors (SNA) and also investigates the hashtags evolution and discourse (Semantic analysis). The collection and visualisation of the data developed using NodeXL. This case is considered one of the most indicative examples of the Greek environmental movement, as this shaped during the evolution of social media and in the crisis context. As such, this chapter demonstrates that the importance of the use of Twitter for the organisation of the movement, as well as an alternative space for public engagement/debate on climate change and environmental-related issues.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the politics involved in local struggles against forestry extractivism. The forestry sector is dependent on vast areas of land for tree plantations. This creates deep-rooted conflicts between global corporations that seek access to natural resources and locals whose way of life requires the use of the same land.

This study draws on a political ontology frame of reference and storytelling methodology to build on testimonies of three small-scale farmers who actively seek to resist forestry plantations next to their land in rural Uruguay. The stories reveal the impossibilities they face when raising claims in the public political sphere and how they lack the means to organise strong collective resistance.

One of the testimonies reveals how the farmers engage in a form of “politics of place” (Escobar, 2001, 2008) to counter the power of the proponents of forestry and the further expansion of plantations. This form of politics strengthens and politicises the ontological difference between extractive and non-extractive worlds. The farmers seek to build new imaginations of rural living and sustainable futures without the presence of extractive corporations. They fulfil this aim by designing community projects that aim to revitalise ancient indigenous legends, set up agro-ecological farms, and teach schoolchildren about the environment.

The struggles of the farmers indicate the territorial transformations involved in (un)making (non)extractive places and the need to expand the analysis of the politics involved in struggles against extractivism beyond social struggles.