Paper short abstract:

Drawing on ethnographic research with engineers in the mining, oil and gas industries, this paper explores how they understand the connections and disconnections between the underground worlds that they map and manipulate and the social worlds in which those extractive activities take place.

Paper long abstract:

Much social science research reveals the ways in which the extraction of natural resources generates new forms of social organization and practice, particularly those which seek to halt those activities or make them more socially and environmentally just. Less is known about the inverse process, or how concerns and controversies that take place on the surface shape—or fail to shape—the ways in which the subsurface is understood and engaged by people working in those industries. Drawing on ethnographic research with practicing engineers in the mining, oil and gas industries, this paper explores how they understand the connections and disconnections between the underground worlds that they map and manipulate and the social worlds in which those extractive activities take place and are contested. How do features of the social terrain factor into how the underground is made knowable and extractable? The depoliticization of engineering—the belief that engineering engages objective knowledge and technological artifacts, as distinct from the subjective social world—can encourage engineers to bracket the domains of the subsurface and the surface, as the latter appears unruly and subject to social conflicts that cannot be resolved by appeals to objective knowledge and facts, in contrast with the underground, which appears to operate according to predictable scientific laws. This paper reveals, however, that mounting public pressure for companies to practice social responsibility generates deep concern among engineers over how to make these two domains legible, translatable and responsive to one another, partially blurring the boundaries between these domains.