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Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the Skouries gold-copper mining project (Greece) and examines the governmentality techniques employed by the state and private investors that reinforce the power relations over land ownership and resources, and the subsequent social struggles that resist such power apparatuses

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the governmentality techniques employed by the state and local authorities and private investors that reinforce the power relations over land ownership and resources, in the case of the ‘Skouries’ gold-copper mining project (Chalkidiki, Greece). Given that governmentality according to Foucault (1978) involves the ‘ensemble formed by the institutions, procedures, analyses and reflections, the calculations and tactics that allow the exercise of this very specific albeit complex form of power’ (Burchell et al., 1991: 102-103) and that the space of the extractive project is not restricted to the mining area but extends across several sites and scales we examine: 1. the entanglement of extractivist projects with logistical operations (Grappi & Neilson, 2019) that link the ‘Skouries’ extractivist project to the shipped containers with concentrated minerals from the port of Thessaloniki and 2. the multifarious mechanisms of biopolitical control of the population (Svampa, 2012) and the techniques of social infiltration through an in-depth look at the local and interlocal social struggles against this mega-development extractivist project.

Moreover, through the lens of the "energy transition" paradigm that expands resource frontiers (Dunlap & Jakobsen, 2020) we explore the extension of the mining activities from gold to copper and the articulation between the ‘Skouries’ extractivist project and the intensification of renewable energy mega-projects throughout Greece. In this framework we further explore the subsequent proliferation of various social struggles that resist the energy mega-projects throughout Greece, question the hegemonic reasoning of development projects and defend their territories and environments.