Artículo metodológico

ANABEL MARIN; ADRIAN SMITH

2012-03-01/2021-07-01

Social

Des.Socioecon.y Serv.-Varios

Natural Resource (NR) based industries are central to the economic structure of most Latin American Countries (LAC) economies. These industries are highly questioned on a number of grounds regarding their capacity to contribute to the development goals of the region. Most attention in the region has focused on how to change the economic structure to move away from NR based industries and, concentrate in the so called high tech industries (e.g. IT, biotechnology, nanotechnology). In this project we focus on a different issue/question: Can NR based industries get transformed so they can serve as a platform for development in the LAC region?. We know from the innovation literature that industries get transformed through the creation of alternatives (or projects which offer solutions to existing problems using different practices, technologies, organisational arrangements, etc.). In this paper, therefore, we explore a framework that will help us to identify and investigate alternative ways of exploitation of NR based industries in LAC. To do so we adopt and adapt some of the concepts and frameworks developed by the transition literature - interested in the unsettling of incumbent industrial structures which are problematic and the emergency and possibility of alternatives. The paper is organised as follow. First, we discuss why we believe developing countries are now in a better position than in the past to develop their own alternatives, and in this way pathways of development. Second, we focus on the alternatives available for emerging economies: changing factor proportions and/or changing the industry or developing alternatives within industries. Third, we develop the socio-technical transitions framework, which is attracting increasing international attention amongst researchers because it tries to bring together the unsettling of incumbent industrial structures which are problematic and the emergence of alternatives. More specifically this framework proposes to bring together two aspects of analysis. Finally, we discuss how we might apply it to NR industries in Latin American contexts, and how we might make it empirically operational through a variety of research methods