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- Convenors:
-
Filipe Calvao
(Graduate Institute of Geneva)
Matthieu Bolay (Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies)
Brian Brazeal (CSU, Chico)
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- Formats:
- Panels Network affiliated
- Location:
- Ended with 1 session
- Sessions:
- Tuesday 21 July, -
Time zone: Europe/Lisbon
Short Abstract:
This panel interrogates the socio-technological imaginaries of the future of a mining industry being largely unmade with the advent of synthetic or lab-grown minerals, the creation of fully automated mining operations, and the introduction of disintermediation digital technologies.
Long Abstract:
The global supply chain of natural resources has been dramatically disrupted with the growing prevalence of lab-grown synthetic minerals, the steady rollout of autonomous machines that culminate in fully automated mines, and mounting pressure for ethical and responsible sourcing of natural resources. Coupled with lowering costs of synthetic gemstone production, significant developments in energy-efficient autonomous learning systems, and new forms of political and financial accountability, the Global South's extractive industry is profoundly changing. This includes new institutional forms that blur the boundaries between mining, consultancy and NGO work, between types of operations (ASM-LSM), as well as between exploration and exploitation. After the 2011 commodity boom peak, these transformations would augur a sustainable alternative to the toll of 'conflict-laden' resources and enhance the potential for responsible sourcing by counteracting the risks associated with mining and enabling end-to-end traceability in mineral supply chains. Yet, the expansion of the extractive frontier into new spatial and technological domains may also spell out new forms of exclusion, particularly for resource-rich countries in the Global South. While the potential impact of artificial intelligence and digitalization in science, finance, manufacturing, transportation, or the energy sectors have been abundantly demonstrated, less attention has been paid to the effects of these technological developments in the extractive industries. These changes, heralded by advances in the lab-grown production of minerals and the recycling of metals, automation and robotization, as well as data mining and management, raise critical social, political and economic problems that this panel seeks to address.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Tuesday 21 July, 2020, -Paper short abstract:
Metallic mining is again developing in Europe, under the cloak of the 'energy transition'. In these peculiar mining landscapes, technological promises of 21st century mining mingle with industrial past. The paper will analyse discourses and materiality of this mining temporality in Andalusia.
Paper long abstract:
Discourses of 'sustainable mining' are surprisingly spreading in Europe. Coming from the Global South, where corporations appropriate sustainable development language as a legitimizing strategy (Kirsch 2010), they are reaching old mining territories in United States and in Europe. There, mining renewal appears as a paradoxical remedy to the economic and ecological crisis. The dependence of the energy transition on 'strategic resources' necessary to renewable energy production and storage leads to a 'green energy bargain' that associates decarbonization and metallic mining (Phadke 2018). The paper will address the paradoxes of such 'green' extractivism analysing how technological promises encounter with industrial past. It will analyse promises of mining renewal focusing on Andalusia (Southern Spain) and on the particular case of the Riotinto copper mine. While its museum is emblematic of mining heritage-making (Hernández Ramírez and Ruiz Ballesteros 2007), corporations and authorities now aim to make Riotinto an example of the 21st century mining. How do industrial heritage-making and discourses on future mining combine to perform new regimes of extractivism? The paper will investigate this peculiar 'mining timescape' (D'Angelo and Pijpers 2018) and its influence on extractive materiality at two scales. Starting from the observation of a mining professional congress in Sevilla, I will analyse the 'economics of techno-scientific promises' (Joly 2010) of automated, energy-efficient and secure mining. I will then skip to the Riotinto mine to grasp the materiality of mining renewal through the coexistence of technological promises and industrial heritage, paying attention to the new forms of subjection it generates.
Paper short abstract:
Enabled by technological advancements and lowering costs of lab-grown techniques, gemstones are now being mass-produced in laboratories. This paper examines how making nature in laboratories may challenge a century premised on extractive logics and the artificial scarcity of natural substances.
Paper long abstract:
In March 2015, the world's largest diamonds producers met at Rio Tinto's headquarters in London to discuss the "fake gems issue," or the increasing threat posed to the mining industry by laboratory-grown diamonds. Four years later, enabled by energy improvements, technological advancements, and lowering prices in lab-grown techniques, mineral resources are now being mass-produced for jewelry and industrial purposes. The share of lab-grown gemstones in the market expands every year, and producers' associations launch marketing campaigns, organize synthetic detection courses to enhance the value of natural gemstones, and step up verification technologies to distinguish between 'fake' and 'real' gemstones. Notwithstanding efforts to differentiate the natural product from undisclosed synthetic sourcing, lab-grown diamonds are now on target to outpace the mined industry in the near future.
Drawing from research in laboratories producing 'man-made' gemstones as well as other certification and grading laboratories, this paper takes stock of these transformations to interrogate the material boundaries between natural and synthetic properties and to assess, more broadly, the future of the mining industry. How are these synthetic gemstones distinct from natural ones with identical physical properties? What specific attributes (material, ethical, or human) make legible these man-made or lab-grown minerals? More broadly, how do these transformations challenge extractive logics and a century premised on the artificial scarcity of natural products?
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the construction of scientific authority in gemology. It is based on comparative ethnographic work in gemological laboratories and with their customers in Colombia, Switzerland, England, Thailand and Sri Lanka.
Paper long abstract:
The detection of synthetic and treated gemstones has been a matter of scientific concern since the time of the Elder Pliny. Today, gemological laboratories around the world issue reports that detail whether a stone is of natural origin, whether and how it has been treated to enhance its appearance, what color term describes it and where it was mined. These reports are valuable and contested in otherwise informal colored gemstone transactions. The science of gemology is intertwined with the gemstone trade rather than with the academy. It brings together disparate disciplines of geology, chemistry and optics in a framework that is aesthetic and forensic. Gemologists are supposed to make authoritative pronouncements on the appearance of gemstones while keeping abreast of new techniques for treating and synthesizing gemstones, formulated to evade their detection. Gemologists themselves are often autodidacts and bibliophiles who dispute each other's qualifications and conclusions. Gemological laboratories develop and deploy advanced instrumentation, but many of their most important determinations are made with microscopes or the naked eye. The reports they produce are expensive, but not conclusive. The parties to a gemstone transaction may procure several conflicting certificates about a single stone. This paper examines the construction of scientific authority in gemology. It is based on comparative ethnographic work in gemological laboratories and with their customers in Colombia, Switzerland, England, Thailand and Sri Lanka. It will show how the contested techniques and technologies of gemology are used to produce discourses of authenticity, traceability and ethics in the extractive industries.
Paper short abstract:
Drawing on fieldwork with engineers in the experimental oil fields of West Texas, this paper reflects on the customary association, drawn in both capitalist practice and much critical theory, of nature with limits and technology with limitlessness.
Paper long abstract:
Drawing on fieldwork with engineers in the experimental oil fields of West Texas, this paper reflects on the customary association, drawn in both capitalist practice and much critical theory, of nature with limits and technology with limitlessness. In the world of non-conventional fossil fuels, and in the world of fracking in particular, oil is increasingly addressed as an indefinite technological problem rather than a finite natural resource. I observe how this relocates the locus of political-economic speculation from ineliminably uncertain knowledge of nature to a more diffuse ambiguity surrounding the plausible future creative powers of the modern business corporation. This requires, I propose, a rethinking of the geopolitics of the multinational corporation in terms of an indefinite (and indefinitely catastrophic) experimentality; and a reinterpretation of the process Hannah Arendt called the "political emancipation of the bourgeoisie."
Paper short abstract:
Tracking the financial mechanisms and exchange relations underlying the so-called "corporate gift" of electricity provision in three mining areas in Guinea, the article sheds light on the trend of "state-sponsored CSR" where companies only perform as givers and the State is the actual sponsor.
Paper long abstract:
Going beyond a static conceptualization of the mining enclave, recent research increasingly scrutinizes the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) schemes as a means of territorial entanglement and control. Several authors refer to the notion of the "corporate gift" to describe these control and coping strategies as well as the resulting power relations between companies and the population around the production facilities. In this article, we track the underlying financial mechanisms and exchange relations for one such "gift": electricity provision in three of the major Guinean mining areas in the towns of Siguiri (Gold), Kamsar (Bauxite), and Mambia (Bauxite). Extensive research showed that in all three cases, the mining companies only performed as "givers" of electricity, but handed over the bill for this electricity provision to the state in the form of debt and suspension of royalties. Confronted with this curious fact of state-sponsored CSR, this article questions the foundations of the arguments around the notion of the corporate gift. In addition to empirically pointing to the emerging trend of extractive corporations acting as lenders, we come to the conclusion that the three electrification projects were at the same time acts of "political sacrifice" by differentiating the sponsors (sacrifiers) and the performers (sacrificers). We thus go beyond the obvious conclusion that mining companies try to maximize their legitimization efforts in an increasingly competitive environment and underlines the role of the indebted State in "company-community" relations and the maintenance of extractive enclaves.
Paper short abstract:
Mining can be about unearthing resources, but such activity is rarely undertaken without a view to securing future revenue. How do mechanisms like foreign investment protection, securitization of mining rights and financialization of international commodity markets govern in and of themselves?
Paper long abstract:
"We want them to come and dig our mountain" told me numerous people in the Konya region of Guinea where the Simandou mountain chain is located. This mountain chain contains some of the biggest reserves of highest quality iron ore in the world. Once smelted to make weapons for Samory Touré's army, the French colonial regime, Soviet Union and more recently Rio Tinto, Chinalco, Vale, Beny Steinmetz Group (BSGR) and Société Minière de Boké have all explored and planned to exploit this exceptionally rich mineral reserve. Even if to the--perhaps surprising?--deception of the inhabitants of the region only some exploratory tons have been drilled, the potential mine has had a worldmaking existence of its own. Rio Tinto fended off a hostile takeover by BHP Billiton simply by claiming Simandou to be undervalued in its books. BSGR sold its rights to half of the reserve to Vale for US$2.5bn and once the Guinean government had revoked its concession based on accusations of corruption, the company sued the country in World Bank investment arbitration. These mechanisms of financial gain working in the absence of actual mining rely on legal techniques that safeguard property across state territories (foreign investment protection) and create the ability to cash in on future revenue streams (securitization). Those techniques do remake worlds, but how do they govern? How does the distinction of political and technical operate in securing foreign investment? How does such financialized projection differ from the desire for the mountain to be dug?