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This paper aims to introduce the special issue “Extractivism and the Links between International Business and People’s Struggles,” which is part of our joint research efforts oriented to advance critical knowledge on the impacts and strategies of extractive transnational corporations and social struggles against them.

This paper presents and discusses contemporary aspects of extractivism and their impacts on nature and livelihood. In a second moment, it introduces and reflects on the four articles that compose the special issue “Extractivism and the Links between International Business and People’s Struggles”.

Extractivism is destructive of nature and livelihoods. As reaction to its destructive logic, millions of people have organized to struggle against extractivist projects around the world. The publication of this special issue is part of authors’ joint research efforts oriented to advance critical knowledge on the impacts and strategies of extractive corporations and social struggles against them. The lessons that the authors learned in their research and their experiences in these struggles were the key motivating factors that led them to organize this special issue, exploring radical alternatives to extractivism, alternatives that have as fundamental criterion the production and reproduction of life.

The value of this introduction is to present and discuss the four articles of the special issue “Extractivism and the Links between International Business and People’s Struggles,” which compose a rich mosaic of themes that emerge in the struggles against extractive projects worldwide, creating a relevant picture of the main defies imposed by extractivism and its negative impacts, from political corporate social responsibility to discourses, from relational ontology to the relations among state, corporations and social movements.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the Brazilian strategy of regional insertion with the support of the Marxist Theory of Dependency (MTD), represented by the work of Ruy Mauro Marini because it allows for the consideration of relations of power within the national scenario and policies resulting from class alliances embedded in the domestic structure of dependency.

The paper discusses the main positions concerning the Varieties of Capitalism approach, arguing that the MTD and specifically Marini’s work can contribute to overcoming some of its limits. These arguments are illustrated through the analysis of the Brazilian strategy of regional competitive insertion focusing on the IIRSA project and the Brazilian Multinational Companies directly involved.

The concept of sub-imperialism has helped to understand the logic behind the Brazilian strategy of regional insertion as part of a historical trajectory that includes the re-edition of a political drive for being the regional leader; the privilege of class fractions benefiting from the access to public funds and new markets (necessary to guarantee their continued and increased profitability); the reinforcement of regional inequalities and, at the same time, the reproduction of Brazilian dependency.

A renewed MTD can contribute to understanding the specific politico-economic strategies of peripheral countries. It can also overcome the limits of the Varieties of Capitalism approach by articulating the economic and political dimensions; by avoiding the structural – functionalist constrains of the institutional perspective; and by allowing the consideration of marginalized voices, rather than considering only the institutionalized ones.

The aim of the paper is to introduce a special issue which looks at the collaboration between the Brazilian state and Brazilian corporations with regard to the transnational activities of the latter.

Departing from the state of the art of current studies of emerging market multinationals, the paper highlights the need for interdisciplinary work to understand the particular role of the state with regard to the outward expansion of these companies. The paper then highlights the different approaches the five papers of the special issue have taken to address this task.

Although Brazil can be counted among the most liberal emerging markets, the special issue finds a very close cooperation between the Brazilian state and Brazilian multinationals. The former helps to finance overseas expansion of Brazilian multinationals, supports the solution of conflicts with the governments of neighboring countries and articulates the interests of Brazilian multinationals in global governance. The problems created by this close cooperation rather materialize with third parties, in particular with somewhat poorer countries in the Brazilian neighborhood, but also with smaller companies, consumers or radical social movements in Brazil.

The paper shows the diversity of approaches that an interdisciplinary cooperation between Political Science, Political Economy, Development Studies and International Business can mobilize to make sense of very close state-business cooperation with regard to transnational activities of emerging markets multinationals.