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Paper short abstract:

This proposition examines the analytical use of nonknowledge-knowledge production to increase understanding of power relations in extractive activities. Analysis capable of shedding light on the creation of new subjectivities related to the characteristics of a territory and its vocation.

Paper long abstract:

Nonknowledge production – directly connected to knowledge production (Böschen & Wehling, 2010; Ravetz, 1987) – can be understood as a quiet and subtle tactic (Frederiksen and Himley, 2020) to maintain and expand extractive activities, an instrument (Foucault, 1991) that reflects power relations and produces new subjectivities (Frederiksen and Himley, 2020).

Nonknowledge is something one does not know, regardless of reasons, implications, or the theoretical possibility of “overcoming” this gap (Böschen et al., 2006). Industrial secrets, monopoly of knowledge production are examples present in extraction projects, as the underground exploitation in the Industrial site of Lacq, in French Southwest rural region, industrialized since the ‘50s.

I argue that the dynamics of nonknowledge-knowledge production has transformed two subjectivities. Firstly, the non-permanent territory characteristics gained a vertical interest (Braun, 2000; Elden, 2013) from a dismissed tiny and dangerous reserve of gas once to an area with sufficient gas to be safely explored. Secondly, the region vocation, a rural area with an after-gas plan in the ‘50s, to an industrial site able to adapt itself to expand extraction in time and to incorporate the climate action in it. This was possible through a combination of slight gas exploration and underground storage where undesirable wastes, carbon among them, can be definitively stored theoretically.

The analysis of the nonknowledge-knowledge dynamic shows how unequal power relations (Henry, 2020) are “systematically inscribed” (Jas, 2015) in them. And how they reinforce these two subjectivities, allowing extraction to spread in time and deeper territories.

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Paper short abstract:

Corporate cartography plays a pivotal yet understudied role in upholding a particular ‘regime of truth’ around mining and ultimately producing territories of extraction. Through a case-study on mining in the Ecuadorian Amazon, this presentation will deconstruct these maps and show how they are contested through counter-maps that represent alternative way of knowing a particular space.

Paper long abstract:

In the extractive industries, maps are widely used to indicate the location of resources, planned infrastructure, potential socio-environmental impacts and mitigation measures. Through their prominence in environmental impact assessments and licensing procedures, these corporate maps inform and legitimize decision-making and interventions in areas of mineral extraction. As such, corporate cartography does not only play a pivotal role in representing (knowledge of) a particular space, but also in actively producing it. Corporate maps are, however, rarely subjected to in-depth examination by scholars on mining conflicts.

Based on Foucault’s writings on power/knowledge (Foucault 1980), I conceive of corporate cartography as an essential part of a ‘regime of truth’ around mining. In order to unravel its workings, I present a case-study of the role of maps in mining conflicts in the Ecuadorian Amazon. With this case-study, I first aim to deconstruct the way in which corporate maps are assembled, legitimized and mobilized to uphold a discourse of ‘responsible mining’ in conflicts over extraction. Second, I examine the way in which grassroots counter-mappings challenge these dominant representations by furthering alternative, more sentient and embodied, ways of knowing and mapping a particular space. I conclude by arguing for an increased attention to corporate cartography and its contestations in exploring the power/knowledge dynamics and power relations around the expansion of the mining frontier.

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Paper short abstract:

The imposition of the lithium mine project in Covas do Barroso, a rural region in northern Portugal, is contested by the local population. Through this case-study I look at the resistance dynamics and analyze the antagonisms to public policies driving wealth, progress and sustainable development.

Paper long abstract:

The increasing projects to extract minerals are part of political strategies to keep promises on growth and energy transition. Strategies that are impacting life in rural and peripheral regions. Located in northern Portugal, Covas do Barroso, is one of these regions. The imposition of the project to mine lithium in the region has been answered with resistance by the local population.

The focus of the paper is on the forms of agency generated by power dynamics emerging inside and outside Covas do Barroso. Foucault's study of power and its analysis on resistance dynamics, suggests analyzing "power relations through the antagonism of strategies" (Foucault, 2001). Thus, through the responses in Covas, I analyze antagonisms to strategies such as wealth, progress and sustainable development, and to the homogeneous meaning given to them by public policies. My search for explaining power dynamics in the region, takes into account the historical implications and cumulative confrontations generated by these policies (Wolf, 1990).

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Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at the geographies of resource governmentality that link global demand for metals and minerals with localized realities and aspirations in the Pacific and considers how the top-down and bottom-up approaches collide and converge – and the effects this creates.

Paper long abstract:

We live in an extractive age that connects people in different parts of the world through extraction and consumption of natural resources. Over the last twenty years a range of mechanisms were produced by promoters of extraction to render it legitimate, e.g. corporate social responsibility and sustainability indicators and reporting. These serve to demonstrate that ‘responsible’ and well-governed resource extraction is both possible and legitimate.

This paper uses an example of a proposed copper and gold extraction project at Frieda River in Papua New Guinea to map and contrast the top-down mechanisms used by the government and the company to advance the project and develop a mine, with bottom-up approaches, developed locally, in response to the proposed project. At the core of the paper is the process of public review of the Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) for the project. The statement – mandated by the government and delivered by the company – provoked a strong response from local communities affected by the proposed project. The communities resurrected old forms of local governance, and mobilised localised ontologies – as well as international alliances – to challenge both the findings of the assessment, as well as the validity of EIS as a mechanism for resource governance.

The paper addresses questions of power, knowledge, and access to representation and decision making to map the geographies of resource governmentality, considered within their respective ontologies – and explore ways in which they collide and converge, and the effects this creates.

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Paper short abstract:

This presentation examines collaborations between Ghana and Japan to argue that contemporary scientific research is premised upon a governmentalization of extraction. We show the ways these collaborations are productive of emergent social relationships, infrastructures and subjectivities.

Paper long abstract:

This presentation examines North-South scientific research collaborations between Ghana and Japan to argue that contemporary global health research is premised upon a governmentalization of extraction. Although many North-South research projects on the African continent are designed to ameliorate real or perceived institutional shortcomings and to redress scientific inequity, they often construct capacity in a relatively narrow and technocratic manner that elides the inherent political dimensions of biomedical research (Geissler and Tousignant 2016). In addition, transnational research projects often institute routinized practices through which materials and data are sent to the North for analysis or validation.

In this presentation, we show that while these research collaborations often do involve extraction to the North, this occurs in the context of multidirectional exchange of plants, people, bacteria, technologies and expertise. At the same time, these collaborations are not merely extractive, instead they are productive of emergent, if uneven, social relationships, material infrastructures, and forms of governance. We situate such extraction then as a global, multispecies biopolitical enterprise that involves both continuities with and departures from colonial and independence-era regimes of governance in Ghana. Our ethnographic research in Japan and Ghana reveals a governmentalization of transnational biomedical research in which Japan-directed ideologies of capacity-building form bureaucratic and routinized infrastructures of governance, which correspond with professional class subject-formation in Ghana that orients biomedical research toward extractive enterprises.