In contrast to the benefits that capital enjoys, Chapter 3 shows in detail the largely negative impacts of mineral extraction on labor. Based on qualitative evidence on the working conditions and employment opportunties in mining industries, it reveals that resource boom in general does not benefit common citizens as the labor force. Moreover, mining industries generate various negative externalities to local communities, which impose heavy financial and health costs on local citizens. Statistical analysis corroborates the empirical observations and shows that resource abundance diminishes employment opportunities in not only high-tech but also labor-intensive industrial sectors and represses labor income in both urban and rural areas. The findings suggest that the resource sector can be characterized as pro-capital and anti-labor, which generates profound implications for social equality and stability.

Chapter 1 introduces the broad objective of the book. This is to show how history can be used to understand why biophysical shocks and hazards, sometimes leading to disasters, push societies in different directions – creating a diversity of possible social and economic outcomes. In order to understand this diversity, we need to look not only at institutional responses but also at the social actors behind these responses, who may have very different goals, not always equivalent to the ‘common good’. We illustrate how shocks and hazards, and the disasters that sometimes ensued, could thus have very diverse consequences not only between societies, but also within the same societies, between social groups, and across wealth, ethnic, and gender lines. In discussing these issues, the book goes back in time further than the modern period. Although the Industrial Revolution and associated new technologies brought momentous changes, these did not create a fundamental rift between the period before and after the Industrial Revolution, and we argue that the underlying mechanisms remained similar. After the outline of the intentions of this book, the chapter concludes with a survey of the fields of disaster studies, disaster history, and the relevant interpretative frameworks in historical research.