Paper short abstract:

This paper tracks a controversy over proposed mining and different modes of resource representation in the Bristol Bay region of southwest Alaska, known for its vibrant salmon fisheries.

Paper long abstract:

Over the past decade, the Bristol Bay region of southwest Alaska has been embroiled in a controversy over prospective mineral development in the headwaters of one of the world's most vibrant salmon fisheries. Following the release of a state land-use plan that appeared to promote large-scale mining in the region, a coalition of actors drew on existing state data to generate an alternative plan that sought to restore priority to subsistence hunting, fishing, and gathering activities. In the contest over mining, these different resource representations were legitimated and contested by an array of actors, including indigenous groups, environmental organizations, and state and federal governments. Competing narratives took shape through vying efforts to empty out and fill up maps and other registers with representations of resources in the form of numbers based on scientific measurement. Ethnographic research in Bristol Bay demonstrates how the reliance on quantification that has shaped the controversy over mining affects which resources and relationships become visible, knowable, and present—and which are subject to absence, ignorance, and invisibility. In probing the effects, the paper argues that while the emphasis on numbers it tracks reinforces the authority of scientific expertise, it also motivates other projects of adding together, such as coalition building, which contribute to assembling new publics in opposition to resource-extractive designs.