Water has always flowed through rivers. Minerals have always rested beneath the ground. Wind has always blown across plains. Yet for much of human history, none of these were considered “resources” in any meaningful sense. So what exactly transforms a raw substance of nature into a resource? The answer lies not in the substance itself, but in the relationship between humans, their knowledge, and their needs. Understanding this relationship is at the heart of the concept of resources in social science.
Table of Contents
What is a resource?
Resources are all the materials available in our environment that are technologically accessible, economically feasible, and culturally sustainable – and that help satisfy human needs and wants. But this definition only tells part of the story. The more revealing definition comes from economist Erich W. Zimmermann, who argued in his landmark 1933 work World Resources and Industries that a resource is not a thing or substance, but a function – the function of satisfying a want or attaining a given end. His most famous assertion sums it up in just five words: “Resources are not, they become.”
This is a profound shift in thinking. It means that no substance is inherently a resource. A lump of coal sitting untouched in the earth is just a geological formation. It becomes a resource only when a human society recognises its value, develops the tools to extract it, and has a need for it. A resource is essentially a cultural concept – natural materials become resources when humans value them, and that value shifts from culture to culture and from time to time.
Resources as a product of human-environment interaction
Resources are not simply found in nature – they are produced through the interaction of three elements: humans, the environment, and culture. The environment supplies the raw material. Culture shapes what a society considers valuable or useful. And humans, through their knowledge and effort, activate that potential. The role of man was grossly underestimated in earlier times; only after the resource concept was introduced was the role of humans in the overall resource creation process clearly understood.
This means the same physical substance can be a resource in one society and entirely ignored in another. Oil was considered a nuisance in many parts of the world until the 19th century, when the technology and demand for petroleum-based energy emerged. Only then did it “become” a resource. In more modern times, the concept of resources has come to refer to processes of development and state formation, as governments and corporations increasingly shape how resources are identified, owned, and managed.
Three conditions that make something a resource
Not every substance in the environment qualifies as a resource. According to the functional understanding of resource geography, three essential conditions must be present before any element of the natural world can be treated as a resource.
1. Knowledge
A society must first know that a substance exists and understand its potential usefulness. Without this awareness, the most abundant material in the world remains invisible as a resource. Resource geography studies not only natural resources but also provides a spatial analysis of resources in relation to human economic needs – and that analysis depends fundamentally on what a society knows. Historical examples abound: uranium was ignored for centuries, and silicon (the basis of modern computing) was just sand until scientific knowledge revealed its semiconductor properties.
2. Technical skill
Knowledge alone is not enough. A society must also possess the technical skill to extract, process, or harness the substance. Resources emerge through complex material and ideational processes shaped by social utility and value, and technical capability is what makes that emergence possible. New technology alters how people appraise resources, influences where they live and work, and affects how economic systems adapt. A mountain stream offers no power to a community that hasn’t developed turbines or generators. The moment that technical capacity appears, the stream transforms from scenery into a source of energy.
3. Demand
The third condition is human need or desire – there must be a demand for what the substance can provide. A natural material becomes a resource when cultural value is given to it – when people desire and accept its use. Without demand, even a well-understood, technically accessible substance serves no economic or social purpose. Demand is often shaped by population growth, industrialisation, cultural practices, and changes in technology, which is why new resources constantly emerge as human societies evolve.
These three conditions – knowledge, technical skill, and demand – work together. Remove any one of them, and a substance cannot become a resource. Together, they explain why resource availability is dynamic and historically contingent, not fixed.
From water to hydropower: a case study in resource creation
No example illustrates the concept of resources more clearly than the transformation of water into a source of hydroelectric power. Water has existed on Earth for billions of years. Humans have been harnessing water to perform work for thousands of years – the Greeks used water wheels to grind wheat more than 2,000 years ago, and the Egyptians used Archimedes water screws for irrigation. But turning water into electricity required something far more specific: a convergence of knowledge, technical innovation, and industrial demand.
Hydroelectricity was born in the last decades of the 19th century, drawing on pre-existing achievements in hydraulic technology and new developments in electric generators. The demand for large-scale power came from rapidly industrialising cities. The technical skill came from engineers like James Francis, whose 1849 water turbine design remains the most widely-used water turbine in the world today. And the knowledge – the understanding that falling water could be converted into rotational mechanical energy and then into electrical current – brought it all together.
The result? Water, which had always existed, suddenly “became” a resource of enormous economic significance. Hydropower currently accounts for over 27% of total U.S. utility-scale renewable electricity generation, and globally it remains the single largest source of renewable electricity. None of this was possible without the three conditions being met simultaneously. The water didn’t change – human knowledge, skill, and need did.
This is precisely what Zimmermann meant. The same river that once flooded farmlands and was considered an obstacle became, through human ingenuity and need, a cornerstone of modern energy infrastructure. Throughout history, humans have developed technologies to exploit water for agriculture, households, transport, recreation, industry, and energy production. Each new application reflects a new layer of knowledge, a new technical skill, and a new form of demand.
Resources are dynamic, not static
One of the most important implications of this concept is that the list of resources is never fixed. The uses and values of resources change from culture to culture and from time to time. Resources are spatially distributed, varying in quantity and quality. What one generation considers waste, the next may consider wealth. Silicon, wind, tidal currents, and solar radiation are all relatively recent additions to the world’s resource inventory – not because they didn’t exist before, but because the conditions of knowledge, technical skill, and demand were not all present at once.
This dynamic nature also has important implications for education and social development. A society that invests in scientific literacy, technical training, and sustainable development is effectively expanding its resource base – not by discovering new materials, but by creating new conditions under which existing materials can become resources. Human ability and need create resource value – and this understanding should guide how societies plan their futures.
Why this concept matters in social science
In social science, the concept of resources is more than a geographical or economic topic. It connects to questions of culture, power, equity, and development. Resource geography evolved as an integrating subject for two major concepts in geography – human and nature – where nature implies natural resources and the human dimension includes culture and technological advancement achieved collectively. Understanding that resources are socially and culturally constructed helps explain why different nations and communities have different resource inventories, even when they share similar physical environments.
It also explains why resource development cannot be separated from human development. Expanding a community’s knowledge base, improving technical education, and understanding changing patterns of demand are all acts of resource creation – as real and consequential as any geological discovery.
What do you think? If resources only “become” resources through human knowledge and need, does this mean that a country’s greatest resource is actually the education and skills of its people? And with growing global demand for clean energy, which untapped natural substances around you might be on the verge of “becoming” the resources of tomorrow?
References
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource
- https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/zimmermann-erich-walter
- https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/geography-standard-16/
- https://ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in/geop03/chapter/chapter-1/
- https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Geography_(Human)/British_Columbia_in_a_Global_Context/04:_Resources_in_British_Columbia/4.02:_What_are_Resources
- https://ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in/geop03/chapter/concept-of-resource-geography/
- https://thebooknotes.in/critical-resource-geography-an-introduction/
- https://www.energy.gov/cmei/water/history-hydropower
- https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/27678490.2024.2343897
- https://www.hydropower.org/iha/discover-history-of-hydropower
- https://www.energy.gov/cmei/water/hydropower-basics
- https://ppp.worldbank.org/sites/default/files/2021-10/Hydroelectric%20Power%20-%20A%20Guide%20for%20Developers%20and%20Investors.pdf
- https://ebooks.inflibnet.ac.in/geop03/concept-of-resource-geography/
Leave a Reply