In my dissertation, I explore why some communities affected by natural resource extraction are able to take effective collective actions to press for their demands while others fail. 

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I provided a social-historical analysis of the affected communities and their grassroots organizations and argued that besides structural and strategic factors, the variation in the outcomes of communal struggles across different extraction-affected communities also hinges on the cohesion of the community. I find that cohesion can be traced to the extent of pre-extraction political reforms and social capital building, such as the leftist land reforms in combination with rural society reconstruction prevalent in parts of the developing world across the 20th century.

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Throughout my study, I suggest that a cohesive community benefits from higher social capital and a more robust capacity for mobilization through an intensive network of primary and secondary organizations, allowing it to engage more effectively with the extractive firm and the government. On the contrary, a fragmented community suffers from lower social capital and a weaker capacity for mobilization through its sparse network of organizations, impeding it from acting from a position of solidarity and using mobilization as an effective tool in the negotiation processes.