The global proliferation of extraction and plantation economies continue to shape profoundly unequal exchanges of resources and labour and wreak havoc on rural economies, ecologies, and social relations. Yet, people at the receiving end of these transformations are not without agency. The spaces that are reshaped by the processes of violent accumulation are populated with individuals and communities who navigate the shifting economic, social, and political seas in the ongoing transformation of rural spaces. A recent special issue explores these processes and provides a conceptual approach with which we may understand how local people seek to make meaningful connections and disconnections to the capitalization of space, resources, and social relations.