Probably not exactly what you're looking for, but take a look at Jason Hickel et al's paper on unequal exchange

Also, "resource curse" sounds like some liberal magical thinking device to deny culpability of contemporary neo-colonial, extractive practices. It's not a curse, imperialism isn't magic

From good ol Wikipedia for everyone:

The resource curse, also known as the paradox of plenty or the poverty paradox, is the phenomenon of countries with an abundance of natural resources (such as fossil fuels and certain minerals) having less economic growth, less democracy, or worse development outcomes than countries with fewer natural resources

Jesus fucking Christ. This sounds like a theory that just absolutely and completely ignores any of human history or any form of material analysis.

"Resource rich countries are often poorer, worse off and less developed than countries which rely on a non-resource based economy, such as finance and services. The reasons behind this are a conundrum to all."

Are you FUCKING kidding me? Holy shit, read literally anything about the history of imperialism, colonialism, banana republics... just a fucking history book in general.

I am actually fucking triggered to even learn about this stupid ass concept.

Their countries are in shambles because you motherfuckers showed up and bombed and killed and raped and pillaged and tortured everyone so you could TAKE THEIR SHIT! You installed puppet governments and murderous dictators who would agree to do your bidding and sell out their countries in exchange for solely personal wealth, not caring what would happen to everyone else.

GOD DAMN. Where do you go to college, the School of the fucking Americas?

You can look at the trifecta of

• Imperialism, the highest form of capitalism by Lenin
• Neocolonialism by Nkrumah
• How Europe underdeveloped Africa by Rodney

Open Veins of Latin America by Galeano drips with this so-called “resource curse” as it deals with topics like mineral extraction in Bolivia and sugar plantations in Cuba.

The liberal framing of this problem seems to be it is that particular economy’s fault it only does the one thing rather than the actual concerted effort over years and decades (as a project) to de-diversify these economies from the outside with help from a comprador class (usually).

Imperialism and colonialism/neocolonialism are the answer, as others have noted. This idea tries to draw a generalization, but if you look at a map of which countries fall into which bucket, you'll find that it's basically just Europe and a couple other colonizer countries vs. everyone else. There are important exceptions, however.

So the first thing I would do is cast doubt on whether the generalization is valid in the first place, or is instead some sleight of hand to avoid culpability.

The exceptions are interesting, however, and I think you could explore this topic by picking at single country case studies.

• The United States is resource-rich, has a finance and services domestic economy, is a "rich" country, and is a superpower. Its legacy is as a settler-colonial project built on genocide and racialized chattel slavery which then rapidly industrialized based on exactly those resources, then displaced the British Empire following WWII due to its unique position of not being bombed to shit while still being a powerful, highly industrialized colonizer country. Simply having resources can be seen as first a "curse" for indigenous Americans simply because European colonizers stole their land and killed them, not some abstract law. And as a colonizer project that became a more or less independent Anglo country, it then suffered no such "curse".

• Russia in the 20th century is a bit inverted. It begins as a quasi-feudal petty empire transitioning to capitalism, with a huge peasant and serf population and small to modest industry. It is, and remains, incredibly resource-rich. On the timeline of European colonialism, however, it had been difficult to conquer. Following the October Revolution, it rapidly industrialized as part of the USSR and became a superpower after WWII despite being bombed to shit and losing 27 million people to the Nazi invasion, a genocidal settler-colonial project inspired by that of the United States. Its power derived from its incredible industrialization, productivity, and most importantly, ability to resist imperialism. The "rich" countries could not invade or buy up its local businesses, could not buy things on the cheap at gunpoint. Following the loss of the USSR and imposition of an imperialized capitalist order, the former USSR now again sufferered millions of deaths, getting the "colonized" (or neocolonized) treatment wherein the productive assets were divvied up among a set of capitalists, social programs were dismantled, and the country was more heavily turned into a resource-exporting country, which will still see in liberals' simplistic description of Russia as a petrostate. Only, that's not the end of the story, as Russia again became capable of resisting imperialism, as the capitalist order set up there by the West was not completely imperialized, not thoroughly foreign-owned, and so there became an opposition between the Russian ruling class and the global imperialist order that wanted their shit. Combined why the interests and powers of the state, this is where we get a Russia that again opposes its own neocolonization, and is therefore relatively rich despite having so much resources. It is simply able to reject imperialism and promote its own economic interests successfully.

• Venezuela is not an exception to the rule, but is illustrative of why this is just about imperialism. Venezuela was colonized by Europeans and has its own long and complex history, but you can summarize its 20th century history in terms of a transition from outright colony to neocolony, wherein colonization is now foreign ownership of enterprise. The US set up this arrangement throughout the Americas south of its borders whenever it could, couping democratically elected leaders, toppling governments, training and sending death squads to achieve its aims of maintaining US business ownership over their countries' businesses and therefore resources: land, materials, labor, etc. Importantly, the US set up and maintained the classic colonizer relationship: sell us resources on the cheap, build your whole economy around this, or else. Do not develop local industrial production, or else. For most of the 19th and 20th centuries, the US was an industrial power that benefited from the colonizer "import resources, export products" system. In Venezuela, which is particularly resource-rich in oil, they became a target for cheap, foreign-owned oil, to the point that their entire economy would soar or crash based on the price of a barrel. This made their government unstable, as it made people's lives unstable. None of this bothered the US so long as the cheap exports relationship continued. Now, for the "at gunpoint" mask-off part: once Chavez's party took over, the US immediately attempted tens to hundreds of coups and began to demonize the entire country with an absurd playbook of lies and distortions. Why did this happen? Was Chavez particularly autocratic? Not at all, and the US was already very happy with military dictatorships in the region. What made the difference was that Chavez's party, once in power, nationalized the oil industry so that the country could benefit from its own resources. They used that money to build social programs for the poor and for indigenous people and to begin diversifying their economy so the country would be less susceptible to the price of oil. The unforgivable sin was to reject foreign ownership of their primary economic foundation. Led by the US, the country was targeted for destruction and "regime change", suffering from sanctions imposed by the US snd its buddies and a typical propaganda campaign that kept the US people from caring about the death created in their name. The final turn of the screws was the Obama admin working with the Saudis to crash the price of oil, and therefore the still-oil-dependent economy of Venezuela. Venezuela remains poor exactly because of colonial and neocolonial apparatuses, not because it simply has resources.

• The deindustrialization of India is also a very good example but I don't have enough space to write about it.

• Guatemala circa 1954 is also a good topic to focus on. Its Truth and Reconciliation documents are very long but basically lay out the exact same pattern on a very human scale, as thr country is smsll.

The simplified version of all of this is that the concept you have to write about is missing the obvious economic and military mechanisms that characterize the situation, and even have it inverted. It's not that resource-rich countries are simply targeted for colonization, even. It's that colonized/neocolonized countries have a resource export economy imposed on them by imperial powers. Their countries are turned into ones where the only thing you know about them economically is that they are "resource-rich", i.e. can be forced to export oil, minerals, bananas. The exceptions prove this, such as the US being "resource rich" but not characterized as simply exporting resources, and this is because it's at the tippy top of the imperialist pecking ordet.

The books you want are ones that describe the political economy of imperialism, with a focus on colonialism and then neocolonialism. An anti-imperialist anslysis of some of the aforementioned countries would also help you out. Some terms used more often in the liberal discourse: uneven exchange, petrostate, resource export economy, banana republic, shock therapy (for Russia), IMF loan terms.

Some suggestions: A Theory of Imperialism by Utsa Patnaik, Open Veins of Latin America by Eduardo Galeano, Empire's Workshop by Greg Grandin, Neo-Colonialism by Nkrumah.

Dependency theory

World-systems theory

Do explain what the "resource curse" is or what you're referring to; I may be able to find what you're looking for, but I could use a bit more info.

Resource curse?

iirc that analysis can only really come from capitalist brainworms working overtime to avoid mentioning imperialism

Parenti's Imperialism 101 might give you some ideas.

The enormous wealth extracted should remind us that there originally were few really poor nations. Countries like Brazil, Indonesia, Chile, Bolivia, Zaire, Mexico, Malaysia, and the Philippines were and sometimes still are rich in resources. Some lands have been so thoroughly plundered as to be desolate in all respects. However, most of the Third World is not "underdeveloped" but overexploited. Western colonization and investments have created a lower rather than a higher living standard.

Essentially the "resource curse" is trivially explained under Marxism, international capitalism is imperialism and the countries with the most natural resources are targeted the most aggressively for exploitation, their social, political and economic ruin is therefore to be expected. The difficulty is articulating that from a starting point that doesn't just reject the idea that it's a real and meaningful phenomenon out of hand.

The fucking "resource curse" lol.

resource curse is a fig leaf to obscure actual relationships of exploitation, but you probably can't say that in the paper

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