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Social protest at mining territories: Examining contentious politics at mining districts in Chile
Abstract
The territorial turn in the research agenda about extractive industries and development has remarked the uneven and entangled processes through which industries anchor across space. Whereas the uneven developmental performance of mining areas has been largely discussed, this turn offers fertile ground to interact with the literature about contentious politics and examine how the spatial distinction of mining territories also shapes local unrest and social mobilization. This paper examines social protest dynamics at mining districts by exploring four dimensions of contentious politics and comparing its prevalence between mining and non-mining districts. For such a purpose, the paper distinguishes between mining and non-mining districts through a cluster analysis based on a set of mining-related variables. Afterward, it analyses four relevant dimensions of social protests related to extractive industries (labor, public services, local politics, and environmental) based on a database of protest actions registered between 2009 and 2019 in 18 newspapers. The results show that mining districts are distinguished by social protests related to public services and labor demands, while social protest related to local politics and environmental issues does not exhibit a significant difference between mining and non-mining districts. Thereby, the districts in which mining exerts a larger influence face higher rates of social protest only regarding labor and public services.
... (a) An increasing demand for environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance by shareholders and institutional investors (Olsen et al., 2021), coupled with a reluctance by investors to consider the mining industry as a primary investment choice ; (b) An increased risk associated with ESG performance and licence to operate (EY, 2022); (c) A trend towards deeper extractions, declining ore grades and increasingly remote locations of potential orebodies ; (d) Energy intensive nature of resource supply and an awareness to reform existing practices (Michaux, 2021;Nwaila et al., 2022); (e) Rising stakeholder expectations and pressure from growing resource nationalisation sentiments in emerging markets 1 (Irarrazaval, 2022); and (f) A slow but steady global mining modernisation (Bartos, 2007), and its potential impact on job losses or rapid turn-over of skillsets. ...
... We argue that the SLO concept and its practice are very important as the mining industry modernises. In emerging markets, this is even more important to ensure that the industry makes a meaningful ESG contribution and mitigate risks at a time when the industry is sometimes viewed as irresponsible (Bainton and Holcombe, 2018;Dharwadkar et al., 2021;Kemp and Owen, 2022;Riera and Iborra, 2017), as evidenced by an increasing number of protests (Irarrazaval, 2022). ...
The concept of mining modernisation has become topical in the quest for sustainable mining, and environmental, social and governance (ESG) requirements. This is not surprising considering modernisation's important role in the current context of the 4th and anticipated 5th industrial revolutions. A mining company's success, competitiveness and sustainability largely hinges on its ability to proactively envision the future mine and plan an implementation pathway now rather than passively responding to its inevitable unfolding. Although the application of digital transformation has seen a slow, but steady uptake in the mining value chain, progress has largely been much slower in the stakeholder engagement space. This has been observed across the mining industry regardless of geographic location despite stakeholder engagement's central role in securing a social licence to operate. Much of the debate has focused on whether stakeholder engagement delivers a social licence to operate, and on the various stakeholder mapping and engagement frameworks. The fundamental aim of this review is to map the digital transformation of the mineral industry with a specific focus towards understanding how stakeholder engagement practices could be integrated in a mine's modernisation strategy to deliver a social licence to operate. In particular, we address: (a) the slow, but steady uptake of technology with potentially adverse effects on stakeholders, such as mining mechanisation, high underground pumping capabilities, and digital exploration; (b) how an understanding of responsible mine modernisation could influence the way the industry deploys people-centric technology for sustainability; (c) how considering stakeholder engagement as network building provides a valuable lens to understand digital transformation for social licence; (d) the promise of responsibly modernised engagement practises for the future mine; and (e) implications of responsibly modernised stakeholder engagement on skillsets of the future. Combining these topics effectively creates a stable mining network, thereby significantly reducing conflicts in mining ecosystems. Technology transformation in the mining value network will be more successful and sustainable if it does not lose sight of the need for a robust integrative stakeholder engagement approach.
... While the need for a higher quality of life in Antofagasta has become probably one of the main reasons for the rise of LDC, commuters are completely detached from that need (Rodrigo & Atienza, 2014). labour protests of mining and mining-related unions in Chile very rarely include demands connected to public services, urban infrastructure, and other improvements in the quality of life of the spaces of social reproduction in mining areas (Irarrazaval, 2022). This has been different in the past before the extension of LDC (Velasquez Orellana, 2020) and particularly during the company town era that gave rise to unionism in Chile (Salazar & Pinto, 1999). ...
New industrial paths do not necessarily translate into regional economic development. This article investigates how the nature of asset mobilisation for path development affects the way new industries generate developmental outcomes. We analyse how a changing human capital mobilisation in the mining service supplier industry in Antofagasta (Chile) affected regional development opportunities. The declining territorial embeddedness of mining-related workers through long-distance commuting weakened mechanisms that translate path development into regional economic development. The study highlights the value of a multi-scalar focus on asset mobilisation processes to improve our understanding of what kind of regional development is generated by new paths.
... The prevalence of power groups that seek to capture rents from mining activities tends to widen economic inequalities, while regional governments tend to protect the interests of the dominant mining multinationals (Hodler, 2006). Abundant natural resource rents, high inequalities, and the negative externalities that extractive activities generate in the environment accentuate social conflicts, lack of trust amongst actors and corruption (Haslam & Ary, 2016;Irarrazaval, 2022). Finally, the presence of high dependency on foreign actors, lack of trust amongst agents, and mounting polarisation and social conflict, reduces the opportunities for local policymakers, business leaders and university authorities to engage in place based leadership (Newey & Coenen, 2022). ...
... Sin embargo, los estudios destacan que una parte significativa de éstos refieren a componentes ambientales (Carranza et al., 2020;Delamaza et al., 2017;Bolados, 2016) y, en particular, están vinculados al agua, ya sea en torno a su utilización o la potencial contaminación (Akchurin, 2020;Aitken et al., 2016;Bauer, 2015;Calderón et al., 2016;Prieto, 2017). También, en zonas preminentemente mineras, se han desarrollado conflictos de tipo redistributivos, en los cuales se demanda empleo o una mejor provisión de servicios públicos en la zona (Irarrázabal, 2022;Valenzuela et al., 2016;Vásquez y Van Treek, 2014). ...
En Chile, la existencia de una gran cantidad de pasivos ambientales mineros (PAM) —que son aquellas instalaciones, efluentes, emisiones, restos o depósitos de residuos que se generaron en el pasado por el cierre inadecuado o el abandono de faenas mineras— constituye un riesgo potencial para la salud de las poblaciones y los ecosistemas y, a pesar de que el país es el principal productor de cobre a nivel mundial, no cuenta con una legislación específica para abordar los efectos producidos por estos. Este libro aborda el problema de los pasivos ambientales mineros en Chile, sistematiza la información existente y brinda evidencias de la necesidad de avanzar hacia una política pública integral sobre la temática a la vez que propone recomendaciones para llevarlo a cabo. En el escenario de transición energética, que proyecta que la producción de cobre se incremente significativamente en los próximos años y con ello aumente la generación de desechos mineros, hoy resulta clave conocer los PAM y comprender sus impactos a nivel social.
... South American models of growth of similar characteristics have been referred to as 'extractive', highlighting their dependence on the international markets and their focus on intensified exploitation-exportation of commodities (Gudynas & Acosta, 2011;Svampa, 2019). A situation that, while generating economic growth, has also given rise to social-environmental unrest (Allain, 2019;Bebbington, 2010;Irarrazaval, 2022;Maillet et al., 2021;Smart, 2017) and the erosion of institutions by private interests (Leiva, 2019;Madariaga et al., 2021). ...
The aim of this study is to territorially link the distribution of mining tailings and multi-dimensional poverty at a local level. For this purpose, a database was constructed with governmental information regarding municipalities that present tailings, and subsequently, identified their levels of multidimensional poverty. The results show: (i) the presence of tailings throughout the national territory, although their greater concentration is found in the country's center-north; (ii) that the majority of tailings at the national level is located in socially and economically disadvantaged municipalities; and (iii) that only 4 municipalities concentrate 321 of the 757 tailings, which represent 42,4% of the national total. This information allows us to conclude that the task of surveying and remediating mining tailings is a national governance challenge and that in order to address it, the context and the social injustice it causes must be considered.
This book discusses the conditions that underpin configuration of specific places as resource peripheries and the consequences that such a socio-spatial formation involves for those places. The book thereby provides an interdisciplinary approach underpinned by economic geography, political ecology, resource geography, development studies and political geography. It also discusses the different technological, political and economic changes that make the ongoing production of resource peripheries a distinctive socio-spatial formation under the global economy. Through a global and interdisciplinary perspective that uncovers ongoing political processes, socio-economic changes and socio-ecological dynamics at resource peripheries, this book argues that it is critical to take a more profound appraisal about the socio-spatial processes behind the contemporary way in which capitalism is appropriating and transforming nature.
Economic geography has generally focussed on industries in, and therefore the economies of, core urban economies. This is problematic when trying to understand how well-established economic processes unfold in global peripheries. This chapter focusses on how the methodologies used at various scales can help better understand the economic processes of global periphery regions by ‘zooming in’ on the industries that shape such regions, and by ‘zooming out’ on the processes mediating firm-level activity in peripheries. It takes a closer look at the resource periphery regions of the Pilbara Region in Western Australia, and Northern Komi in North-western Russia, to identify distinct scalar spatial relations that are relevant to understanding how peripheries are contextualised and made. We find similarities in resource economy structures at the regional and sub-national scales, particularly in their socioeconomic situation vis-à-vis their relationship to core national regions, presence of large Indigenous populations, and marginalised political position. However, we find considerable divergence at the national scale. Russian networks are more centralised than Australian networks, where many cities act as key economic hubs. The chapter elucidates the importance of the cross-scale analysis to understand the complexities of resource peripheries.
La literatura Latinoamericana sobre extractivismo ha evidenciado las contradicciones espaciales de los modelos de desarrollo basados en la apropiación intensiva y extensiva de recursos naturales. La categoría de análisis espacial que han primado ha sido el territorio, en la cual se contiene al estado nacional, como articulador del modelo de desarrollo, y la local, para conceptualizar los proyectos y prácticas de gobernanza de la naturaleza de tipo comunitaria. Si bien estas categorías han permitido valorizar la dimensión territorial, existen diversos procesos socioespaciales que estructuran el andamiaje espacial del extractivismo que requieren de una lectura espacial dinámica y relacional. Este artículo contribuye en esa dirección analizando las dinámicas socioespaciales que configuran a la industria de hidrocarburos en Perú, específicamente las interacciones entre redes de producción y sus anclajes espaciales, y las relaciones escalares del poder del estado.
Planetary Mine rethinks the politics and territoriality of resource extraction, especially as the mining industry becomes reorganized in the form of logistical networks, and East Asian economies emerge as the new pivot of the capitalist world-system. Through an exploration of the ways in which mines in the Atacama Desert of Chile—the driest in the world—have become intermingled with an expanding constellation of megacities, ports, banks, and factories across East Asia, the book rethinks uneven geographical development in the era of supply chain capitalism. Arguing that extraction entails much more than the mere spatiality of mine shafts and pits, Planetary Mine points towards the expanding webs of infrastructure, of labor, of finance, and of struggle, that drive resource-based industries in the twenty-first century.
Opposition to the social and environmental impacts of large-scale mining has become more visible in Chile since the early 1990s, yet not all mining projects catalyze mobilization. Building on the concept of defensive mobilization, I argue that opposition is more likely when a project is perceived as a threat to some members of a community. Using a data set of all major mining projects submitted for environmental licensing since environmental impact assessments were implemented in Chile, I identify the conditions under which mining projects lead to opposition. The results, based on binary logistic regression analysis, show that projects threatening agrarian and indigenous communities, where threats to existing water and land uses are especially salient, are more likely to be opposed. Community challenges are also more likely for projects majority-owned by international investors. About four out of every ten proposed projects have faced opposition, and only a handful of projects have ever been definitively rejected, even as projects that are found to violate regulations are increasingly fined and challenged in court as well as facing protests and public scrutiny.
Although it has been argued that current configurations of extractive industries provide opportunities for developing production linkages, in other words, that “one thing leads to another”, these opportunities are not necessarily realised directly in the resource‐holding countries. This article aims to explain why the greater opportunities for creating increased production linkages may remain unrealised. While existing research on production linkages is characterised by a national scale mode of analysis, this article examines production linkages in the resource‐poor gateway city of Singapore that are intended to serve oil and gas operations at the macro‐regional level in Indonesia and Vietnam. The results reveal that a significant depth and breadth of production linkages have unfolded in Singapore, highlighting that in particular sophisticated production linkages tend to have a broader geographic scope. Moreover, the analysis identifies factors that have shifted the territorial scale of labour‐intensive and low‐technology production linkages from a macro‐regional towards a national or subnational level, to the advantage of the resource‐holding countries. These insights add some complexity to the study of production‐linkage development and emphasise the need for a multi‐scalar perspective that does not stop at national borders.
Open Access: https://doi.org/10.1111/grow.12347
Social sciences have documented the economic and social impacts of mining activities on communities around the world, showing mining towns and villages, on the one hand, present high economic growth and, on the other, have problematic quality-of-life indicators. In this article, we present the results of an extensive ethnographic study of one city in northern Chile, Antofagasta, located in a region where about half of the country's total copper production is concentrated. We sociologically explore these trends and document how they are interconnected and configure specific ways of living and inhabiting a place. Far from disproving the problematic relationship between social development and the mining industry, we reflect on the interrelatedness of the impacts of mining projects and suggest analytical clues for an ecological study of mining cities.
In recent years, seawater desalination has become a more viable and common solution to water scarcity around the world. Desalination is a supply‐led solution in that it produces additional water, rather than manages demand for existing resources. Although a growing body of work has analysed the environmental and social implications of desalination, desalinated water has to date been considered as an additional source that fulfils demand, with little attention to how it integrates with existing sources, and to what effect(s). In this paper, we employ the framework of the hydrosocial cycle to analyse how desalination reconfigures the social relations of control over water and reworks waterscapes in Chile. Using two case studies of Antofagasta and Petorca in the drought‐affected north, which are dominated by export industries ‐ mining and agriculture, respectively ‐ we argue that desalination serves to disarticulate drinking water from freshwater, with implications for economic growth, social development, and water policy. We show that desalination entails more than providing additional water to alleviate shortages, and rather constitutes a strategy that permits the reorganisation of water sources so as to permit new forms of capital accumulation, through both the water industry as well as the major industries that are threatened by scarcity. We argue that this has three important implications. First, replacing freshwater with desalinated water for human consumption changes the social relations of control over water, by rendering consumers dependent on desalination plants and their risks. Second, this disarticulation serves to liberate freshwater to sustain the same industries that encroached upon drinking water sources. Third, as a supply‐led solution, desalination alleviates some of the water shortages that had been attributed to Chile’s water markets model, thereby reducing pressure for reform.
Regional development and innovation are often studied in the context of agglomeration economies, leading to a perception bias regarding the virtues of cities. Recent work on interregional connectivity has explored alternative mechanisms for economic growth, such as borrowed size and regional embeddedness, but there are limited studies examining these in the context of peripheries. The paper addresses this by examining the spatial relations of industry, commuting and agglomeration to innovation in Japan peripheries, finding dynamics between and within communities vary in how these factors increase innovation. Such understandings are critical in policy redressing core–periphery imbalances and industry competitiveness.
Scholars agree that institutional and non-institutional (i.e., protest) politics are increasingly interrelated. One expression of this phenomenon is party protest – when leaders, activists, or sympathizers of political parties participate in protest events and identify themselves as such. Yet we know little about how often parties partake in protests, which ones do so, and under which conditions. Using data on more than 2,300 protest events in Chile between 2000 and 2012, I show that party protest takes place in only 6% of all protest events, and that it is essentially monopolized by leftist parties. Additionally, by combining several strands of the literature on political parties and collective action, I derive hypotheses about the impact of the features of protest events and the broader national context on the chances of party protest. Multivariate regression models show that party protest is more likely in events which take place in highly visible locations and are coordinated by other civil society organizations. Additionally, party protest occurs when the center-left coalition is in power and when collective protest at the national-level is less intense and less transgressive.
Based on Neil Brenner's Implosion/Explosion theory, this article suggests evidence for a new theoretical conceptualization of the urbanization phenomena. The methodology considers the inclusion of the economic cycles of production that occur outside the city to the matrix analysis. The importance of this theory relies on the significant dissociation between capital accumulation spaces and productive territories. By analyzing the relationship between the Mining and Forestry production with sales associated to these economic activities, the article tests the pertinence of the application of the urban theory in the Chilean case. Furthermore, the research findings demonstrate that most of the sales occur in Santiago, whereas most of the production occurs in other regions. Therefore, the Implosions/Explosions urban theory results as pertinent for understanding some urbanization processes in Chile, and consequently, the article proposes research prospects based on the cartographies exposed in this article.
Despite the poor working conditions, between 2003 and 2007 Chilean miners organised the longest and largest strikes in the country since the 1980s, obtaining one of the most important recent victories of the Latin American labour movement. This article uses this experience to illustrate the importance of the links between precarious workers and political activists. Drawing on 18 months of extensive fieldwork conducted at several mining sites in Chile, the article contends that the analysis of precarious workers’ organisations needs to consider workers’ access to different organisational resources, and the role that political parties’ militants play in such access, particularly in the Global South.
Chile is the leading producer of copper worldwide and its richest mineral deposits are found in the Antofagasta Region of northern Chile. Mining activities have significantly increased income and employment in the region; however, there has been little assessment of the resulting environmental impacts to residents. The port of Antofagasta, located 1,430 km north of Santiago, the capital of Chile, functioned as mineral stockpile until 1998 and has served as a copper concentrate stockpile since 2014. Samples were collected in 2014 and 2016 that show elevated concentrations of As, Cu, Pb, and Zn in street dust and in residents’ blood (Pb) and urine (As) samples. To interpret and analyze the spatial variability and likely sources of contamination, existent data of basement rocks and soil geochemistry in the city as well as public-domain airborne dust were studied. Additionally, a bioaccessibility assay of airborne dust was conducted and the chemical daily intake and hazard index were calculated to provide a preliminary health risk assessment in the vicinity of the port. The main conclusions indicate that the concentrations of Ba, Co, Cr, Mn, Ni, and V recorded from Antofagasta dust likely originate from intrusive, volcanic, metamorphic rocks, dikes, or soil within the city. However, the elevated concentrations of As, Cd, Cu, Mo, Pb, and Zn do not originate from these geologic outcrops, and are thus considered anthropogenic contaminants. The average concentrations of As, Cu, and Zn are possibly the highest in recorded street dust worldwide at 239, 10,821, and 11,869 mg kg ⁻¹ , respectively. Furthermore, the contaminants As, Pb, and Cu exhibit the highest bioaccessibilities and preliminary health risk indices show that As and Cu contribute to elevated health risks in exposed children and adults chronically exposed to dust in Antofagasta, whereas Pb is considered harmful at any concentration. Therefore, an increased environmental awareness and greater protective measures are necessary in Antofagasta and possibly other similar mining port cities in developing countries.
En el presente artículo hemos realizado una radiografía de la huelga chilena frente a la estructura legal, económica, y de acción sindical, en el marco de los ciclos de lucha nacionales y las relaciones de poder que enfrentan los trabajadores para paralizar la producción.
La huelga extra-legal es la marca más relevante del ciclo huelguista del 2007- 2015, basada en una multiplicación de la participación de los empleados públicos, de una parte, y una expansión de la participación en el sector privado, de otra. Esta alza en la cantidad de trabajadores movilizados apareja las fuerzas sectoriales del sindicalismo, aunque, a su vez, tensiona aún más la diferenciación con respecto a la potencia huelguista por sector económico. Como un factor transformador, la huelga extra-legal abre un ciclo de lucha más dinámico, pero que deja en mayor evidencia las debilidades internas del sindicalismo chileno.
Within a context of intensifying socio-territorial conflicts in several countries, this paper analyses a database of 101 conflicts occurring in Chile between 2005 and 2014. These conflicts emerged from specific territorial problems, were scattered throughout the country, and did not involve urban centres. The evidence examined here shows significant contentious activity in non-metropolitan territories during this period. These conflicts occur in different places, arise from local problems and articulate new actors into the political game. They have had an impact on the modification of public and private investment projects and can also bring broader political consequences. The paper widens the argument that extractivism is the source of these conflicts, and suggests that politicization processes have modified what was once a Chilean historical pattern of relatively centralized conflict articulated by traditional political actors. It also identifies some venues for future research to more accurately determine the political consequences of such conflicts. © Gonzalo Delamaza, Antoine Maillet, & Christian Martínez Neira. Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported (CC BY 4.0) License https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Fiscal regimes to the mining industry facilitate the revenue-raising task of resource-dependent economies as they reduce the local tax burden of their residents. Whether these fiscal arrangements translate into a higher allocation of public goods in these economies remains yet unclear. We analyze the effects that local mineral taxation has on the provision of public goods in mining communities using Chile as a case study. We examine the effects of a non-distortionary tax on local concessions using a panel of 345 local governments between 2009 and 2014. To identify the effect, we compare the benefits of the tax on mining localities using two counterfactual groups of non-mining localities. We control for time-invariant and time-variant unobservable factors through both a fixed-effects and an instrumental variable fixed-effects estimator. Results show that the mineral tax increases the provision of only two out of four indicators of public goods. Further evidence suggests that local mineral taxation crowds out other local taxes.
The fly-in/fly-Out (FIFO) or, drive-in/drive-out (DIDO) labour system is a long-distance commuting work arrangement to attract workers towards remote mineral or fossil fuel extraction areas, where they work in shifts and then return to their usual place of residence located in a different region. Along with more and cheaper transportation alternatives, the use of FIFO/DIDO systems have importantly increased in last decades around the world, which has translated to FIFO/DIDO systems operating even when already established cities are present in extractive regions. This paper uses the case of Chile, one of the most important mining countries in the world, to explore whether and in what extent these labor systems influence wage compensations. We find that FIFO/DIDO commuters obtain an average wage compensation of 2.4 per cent per commuted hour.
The extraction of natural resources in Peru has led to an impressive economic expansion, but the country has also had more than its share of protests against resource extraction. The conventional wisdom on mobilizations against extraction emphasizes their geographical dispersion throughout the country, the presence of weak protest movement organizations, and, ultimately, their minimal influence on national outcomes. Drawing on data from fieldwork and interviews, I identify the types of mobilizations that are more likely to lead to organized and sustained challenges against resource extraction. Following contributions on the political consequences of movements, I explain the conditions associated with positive movement outcomes as well as the types of collective goods produced by these mobilizations. Insofar as the extraction of natural resources is pivotal to a country's political economy, the political consequences of protests over extraction in Peru have important ramifications for similar resource-based growth policies elsewhere in the developing world.
A radical shift in the spatial organization of the global mining industry has occurred over the last three decades. I argue that the shift from the traditional mining town, where workers lived close to the mine, to the new model of long distance commuting, where workers are transported in from distant cities for their shifts, transforms labour union strategies. Drawing on an in-depth case study from Peru, I show that long distance commuting reduces workers’ capacity to mobilize locally by affecting the dynamics in three social spaces: the mining camp, the home and the union hall. Moreover, and in contrast to prior research, I detail how mining unions have developed new compensatory strategies to maintain their bargaining power.
Drawing upon the work of McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly, Lefebvre, and others, we argue that analysis of political contention dynamics can benefit from attention to the spatial constitution and context of social, political, and economic processes, and the ways in which these processes are spatially experienced and contested. We contend that spatial processes are inseparable from, and constitutive of, social processes. Starting from the central geographic concepts of space, place, and scale, we discuss how a spatial perspective can produce more illuminating understandings of how people perceive, shape, and act upon grievances and opportunities. We demonstrate the utility of a spatial perspective through an examination of ways in which space is implicated in the operation of several mechanisms identified by McAdam, Tarrow, and Tilly. Finally, we introduce the papers included in this special issue on space and contentious politics, discussing the ways each author finds place, space, and scale to be bound up in the dynamics of political contention.
In a context of planetary urbanization, where vast swathes of the countryside are being enclosed on an ongoing basis in order to support a sprawling urban system, the relationship between finance and land-use change needs to be brought to the forefront. By engaging with Henri Lefebvre's ideas of levels and totality, this paper draws analytical connections between the financialization of the transnational mining industry and the production of the financialized urban everyday in geographies of extraction. The paper does this by looking at the case of Pascua Lama, a multibillion open-cast mine to be developed in Chile by a major mining company in the context of the current global gold rush. Through this case, I show how a set of strategies pursued by financiers and corporate managers thousands of kilometers away from the extraction site, resulted in fractured spaces of urbanization shaped by socioecological plunder, dispossession and geographically uneven financial landscapes.
En el año 2011, l as protestas en la ciudad minera de Calama marcaron un hito en la historia de los movimientos chilenos de protesta te rritorial. A l exigir autonomía, el 5% de las u tilidades generadas por el cobre (la recuperación de los royalties regionales alcanzados entre 1955 y 1973 luego derogadas en la dictadura militar), y la nacionalización de los recursos, e l movimiento social de Calama se diferencia de otras acciones colect ivas locales y regionales ligadas a fenómenos de representación contenciosa y nimby (no en mi patio trasero) ; todas ellas acciones motivadas por razones económicas puntuales, en contra de las externalidades negativas ambientales o construidas sobre el peti cionismo al Estado. El presente artículo es un estudio de casos sobre el movimiento de Calama en el que se reflexiona en torno a tres elementos: la presencia de un liderazgo personalista; la existencia de dos identidades históricas : minera y atacameña; y e l desarrollo de mecanismos de agregación y solidaridad.
The relation between resource extraction and the places in which extraction takes place has been a long-standing issue for academic, social and political debates. The paths through which resource extraction alter developmental dynamics, the everyday life of the local population and the environmental context have called the attention of social science since its origins. Despite the long-standing dimensions, which have been in the spotlight, contemporary political, economic and social changes demand revising the way in which resource extraction connects global production with the places where extraction occurs, here referred to as resource peripheries. This introduction critically revisits the academic debate about resource peripheries, asking to move forward from an understanding of resource peripheries as local models, towards a dynamic approach that allows grasping the socio-spatial relations that make the extraction places peripheral. For doing so, this section proposes three core dimensions that must be revisited in the research about resource peripheries: (i) changes in how contemporary capitalism is organizing production through globalized value chains; (ii) the re-scalation of political dynamics, which shape the economic organization of the places of extraction; and (iii) emergent issues, such as long-distance commuting, climate change and human rights
Local development literature has generally assumed that labour force is a crucial and territorially embedded asset, the origin of social and political demands to improve the quality of life and one of the main driving forces of local change and economic development. Nowadays, this assumption is far from true, particularly in the case of resource peripheries. As it has happened with the increasing externalization of tasks to service firms located in the main urban agglomerations, a growing proportion of workers—especially those in primary industries—live far away from the resource peripheries where they produce, fostered by the increasing use of Fly-in/fly-out (FIFO) and other systems and technologies facilitating long-distance work. Furthermore, the increasing use of robotics and remote work in primary activities can turn resource peripheries into places for production, but not for social reproduction. By using some of the main elements of GPN framework, this chapter proposes an extension of resource periphery research agenda, considering this trend of declining labour territorial and social embeddedness; analyses how this trend has become a distinctive characteristic of resource peripheries; and what the consequences are for economic development in these territories.
This manuscript discusses a little-studied aspect of mining-related long-distance commutation, such as the real estate investments of its workers in their home cities. Based on surveys conducted with miners and interviews with local experts, this work analyzes this issue specifically in Concepción, Chile. This city would act as a hinge for labor migration, which will translate into a return on investment that would greatly strengthen the housing market. The results indicate that mining emerges as a facilitator of acquisitions for first-time homeowners, something that is linked to public subsidies. This contrasts with the traditional image of miners as large investors and highlights the importance of public policies for the emergence of real estate growth linked to mining in Chilean regions.
In recent decades the study of social movements, revolution, democratization and other non-routine politics has flourished. And yet research on the topic remains highly fragmented, reflecting the influence of at least three traditional divisions. The first of these reflects the view that various forms of contention are distinct and should be studied independent of others. Separate literatures have developed around the study of social movements, revolutions and industrial conflict. A second approach to the study of political contention denies the possibility of general theory in deference to a grounding in the temporal and spatial particulars of any given episode of contention. The study of contentious politics are left to 'area specialists' and/or historians with a thorough knowledge of the time and place in question. Finally, overlaid on these two divisions are stylized theoretical traditions - structuralist, culturalist, and rationalist - that have developed largely in isolation from one another. This book was first published in 2001.
A “service provision” value chain that sustains the activities of the Las Bambas copper mine cuts across rural communities and the mining town, connected by the invisibilized work of indigenous and/or migrant women, through their maintenance of the rural homestead, or in their provision of feminized services, essential to men who work in the urban center near the mine. We argue that in this case women’s access to mining’s benefits and/or jobs in both rural and urban spaces is mediated by gender, as mining’s direct and indirect effects serve to consolidate their social reproductive roles.
Unlike political or economic institutions, social movements have an elusive power, but one that is no less real. From the French and American revolutions through the democratic and workers' movements of the nineteenth century to the totalitarian movements of today, movements exercise a fleeting but powerful influence on politics and society. This study surveys the history of the social movement, puts forward a theory of collective action to explain its surges and declines, and offers an interpretation of the power of movement that emphasises its effects on personal lives, policy reforms and political culture. While covering cultural, organisational and personal sources of movements' power, the book emphasises the rise and fall of social movements as part of political struggle and as the outcome of changes in political opportunity structure.
As mining activity generally occurs far away from metropolitan areas, governments tend to forget the problems that communities in mining regions face. Centralized government systems and, more importantly, a lack of a robust understanding of the effects of mining impacts on communities and regions, explain in part the lag of development in mining regions and countries. This paper discusses these aspects and introduces eight different papers (comprising the Special Issue: Territorial development and mining in Chile) discussing the impacts that mining activity brings to local economic activity and societal outcomes using the case of Chile, one of the most important mining countries in the world. We conclude this invitation to a territorial turn in the study of mining-based economic development with a set of key research topics we believe would benefit from further research to improve our understanding of the temporal and spatial dynamics between mining activity and development across territories.
This article maps the emerging forms of labor struggles in the global mining industry. Using mineworkers’ mobilizations in Chile and Peru as examples, it shows how labor struggles develop in different manners in these two countries. In Chile, workers have moved towards national-level actions, whereas in Peru they have not been as interested in building such a network, often prioritizing their partnerships with local communities. Drawing on in-depth case studies in both countries, the article links the literature on social movements and labor geography to understand the transformation of labor struggles in Latin America.
Political and academic debates about the distribution of resource rents to producing areas have addressed the issue of whether or not the transfers unleash conflicts. While this kind of debate is valid, the present paper argues that such a discussion is missing the point regarding the processes behind said types of conflicts, as well as how such conflicts are framed at the sub-national political geography of the state. By more deeply exploring these dimensions, the argument of this paper is that the production of uneven development within sub-national areas is crucial for understanding the above-mentioned conflicts and how the central state internalises those conflicts, producing new political geographies of rent distribution. As such, different territorial discourses of autonomy emerge along with uneven development, but their capacity to reach institutional autonomy is grounded on the spatial politics of each state. Empirically, this paper analyses how natural gas rents are distributed to sub-national producing areas in Peru and Bolivia, and how the production of uneven development through natural gas rents at sub-national level reactivated previous territorial demands for autonomy, which were intern-alised by central states in different ways.
Antofagasta is an intermediate Chilean city featuring an extractive mining sector which attracts a population of low-income migrants, internal and cross-national, looking for economic opportunities. This leads to a gap between supply and demand for rental housing, subletting and homeownership, resulting in a highly speculative housing market. This paper examines the consequent increase in so-called informal settlements and shows how self-built housing has become an alternative way for the population of internal and foreign migrants to access housing. Drawing upon both quantitative (secondary statistics and a survey with 102 households) and qualitative research (15 in-depth interviews), the paper shows how a private-led, profit-oriented and racist housing market has consolidated in the city. Moreover, by shedding light on the everyday ways in which residents access urban services, the research points to the complex forms of juxtaposition between the formal and the informal in central, peri-central and peripheral sectors of the city. Therefore, the paper questions the formal–informal dualities in access to housing and the necessity to rethink housing and urban policies accordingly.
Mining services suppliers (MSS) have become one of the main targets of mining-led development policies, but there are not works that analyze their evolution during mineral prices cycles at a local level. The study of this group of frms is especially relevant to understand the curse or blessing consequences of mining prices volatility. We describe the performance of Chilean MSS during and after the “super-cycle”, between 2006 and 2016, and analyze to what extent it is related to the location in municipalities specialized or not in mining activities. For these purpose, we use two unusually rich micro-level datasets that allow us to follow around 3500 services supplier during the period of analysis, describe their evolution, and conduct a series of variance-decomposition exercises to assess the differences in the MSS sector along the cycle and according to the frms´ location. Result show that the expansion phase of the cycle especially beneftted mining municipalities in terms of business formation and growth, while the contraction phase since 2012 negatively affected the whole group of suppliers independently of their location.
The extractive sector is increasingly important in the GDP and export basket of the four Andean countries under study (ACs) (Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia). The analysis of an updated inventory of 296 environmental con icts in the EJAtlas for these four countries reaches the following conclusions: extractivism causes en- vironmental con icts related to mining, fossil fuels, hydropower and biomass; indigenous, Afro-descendant and peasant communities are the most a ected; behind the con icts, there are not only environmental impacts but also social impacts that concern livelihoods, land deprivation and work insecurity, and also loss of cultural practices and cultural identity; most of the forms of collective action used in protests are peaceful, most notably petitions, street marches, media activism, lawsuits, while States and companies criminalize activists and are often violent (with about 75 cases in which there are deaths or disappearance of environmental defenders); socio-environmental movements (that sometimes include environmental NGOs) have achieved relative success, stopping 59 of the 296 con ict-generating projects and giving birth to new forms of resistance. While suc- cessfully stopping single projects cannot be construed as a general critique of economic growth, such attempts are congruent with post-development, community-centric, ecologically-balanced and culturally-sensitive Andean visions such as buen vivir or sumak kawsay. They are also congruent with policy proposals put forward from a post-economic growth perspective such as “leaving unburnable fuels in the ground” and “resource ex- traction caps”.
In this paper we propose that we can best make sense of mining‐induced in‐migration in Melanesia through the dual frame of “land” and “access”, which can both be seen as a type of “capital” or “asset” in the way that Anthony Bebbington used these terms in his well‐known “capitals and capabilities” framework for analysing rural livelihoods. The concept of land provides a useful point of entry for understanding the relationship between mining, migration and development in this setting. We argue that if land is central to the making of social relations in Melanesia (that land is a social relation), then mining changes the meaning and values that can flow from land, and these changes induce manoeuvres on the part of residents and in‐migrants as they attempt to control or become part of the social relations that constitute land in order to access the development benefits derived from mining activities. In the end, these actions remake place, and irrevocably reshape relationships and senses of place that precede mining.
There is neither simple, nor universal relationship between mineral abundance and conflict. Pleased with the growing scholarly production on the local resource curse, we are concerned about how little we discuss the external validity of findings. Studies are sometimes taken as unconditional evidence of the resource curse (or its inexistence), which is a misunderstanding of a phenomenon that takes place under space and time-sensitive circumstances. To build our argument, we replicate and expand the period of analysis of Arellano-Yanguas (2011), a study of mining conflict in Peru that has become a point of reference in the new local resource curse literature. We show that the relationship between mining and conflict in Peru is complex. In particular, econometric findings on how fiscal windfalls impact on conflict will depend on variable definitions and period of analysis. The main goal of our research is to highlight the need of contextualizing quantitative evidence of resource-based local development that, alike qualitative research, provide results plausible of generalization yet not necessarily externally valid.
Chilean mining municipalities collect a mineral tax to compensate for the negative externalities associated with resource extraction. Although this implies a positive marginal impact on local finance, there is not enough empirical evidence to support that this improves the quality of life in these communities. This article attempts to bridge this knowledge gap via a unique experimental framework, specifically, the Chilean tax system and a mining law that allows certain municipalities above an exogenous threshold to keep the extra income. We use Regression Discontinuity Design to identify the causal effect on public education indicators and our results are robust and show that in the margin that the educational performance of mining municipalities is worse than that of the counterfactuals. In addition, the evidence suggests that despite the resource windfalls of the mining municipalities, it is not clear if these municipalities invest more resources in public education than other localities.
In small, open, mineral-export based economies, the economic growth of some medium sized cities is linked to cycles of boom and bust of export revenues due to commodity price volatility. We propose to explain urban economic growth in terms of real estate investment and private consumption as a function of commodity exports, wages and financial liquidity by employing “Dutch disease” and the “secondary circuit” of capital as theoretical references. Monthly data (2005–2015) from three mining-related cities are used in order to estimate these effects using linear regression models. Results show some general features like the outstanding influence of mining and other wages rather than export revenues on retail in most cities. Divergent results are observed regarding real estate investment being mining wages, financial liquidity, exports and also loans explanatory factors. Thus it could be shown that the main vehicle for spill-over from mining to urban economies is private household income and its distribution in space. Furthermore by calculating separate models for each city, important differences among contrasting types of cities appear. The importance of discussing the impacts of mining on economic development on a local, rather than on a national scale and of considering wages more systematically in the theoretical discussion of secondary and linkage effects of mining and in the design of public policy on commodity based development is evident.
This article uses a political ecology approach to examine how urban residents of the refinery city of Esmeraldas “wager life” under conditions of social and chemical toxicity associated with oil capitalism. The article draws on the scholarship on affective economies and critical oil geographies to trace the knotting of social reproduction and oil capital in Esmeraldas and to illustrate how “cruel optimisms” (Berlant 2011 Berlant, L. G. 2011. Cruel optimism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.[Crossref] [Google Scholar]) allow city-dwellers to make sense of everyday life amidst frontier-style petro-capitalism. Focusing on personal narratives of social reproduction, affect, and hope in the city, the article first argues that “justice” can be contradictory and politically ambivalent and, second, challenges fixed readings of resistance, refusal, or submission in resource extraction–dominated sites. Rather than presupposing resistance to petro-capitalism or submission to its workings, the article illustrates the liveliness of urban justice struggles and how attention to embodied ecologies and affective oil economies deepens scholarship on social justice. Key Words: cruel optimisms, environmental justice, petro-capital, social reproduction, urban political ecology.
Scholars across the social sciences have debated whether resource dependence curses or blesses national development prospects, with a growing consensus on mixed outcomes and the centrality of institutions. Mainstream literature, however, falls short in depicting what the resource curse entails: the claim that “institutions matter” usually has a narrow meaning that largely overlooks the significance of place. A review of the paved road in research reveals a need to critically integrate approaches to studying the curse, as well as more insightful research on which institutions matter, how , and where . Expounding six governance challenges and thirteen development traps, I set out a simple yet crucial lesson: resource-based development presents both blessings and curses for any given resource-rich country in any given time period, and institutions are likely to be part of the explanation. I sketch how a “context matters” framework could guide future research, with illustrations from the Latin American experience.
The pace of mineral extraction has greatly accelerated since the mid-1950s, with a major mineral boom taking place in the past decade. Responding to growing demands for more material resources, mining projects have met with frequent resistance from local communities. Yet, not all communities oppose mining projects. Based on an extensive literature review, this paper identifies and discusses factors affecting the likelihood of resistance to mining projects by local communities. Case study evidence suggests that dependency towards mining companies, political marginalisation, and trust in institutions tend to reduce resistance likelihood. In contrast, large environmental impacts, lack of participation, extra-local alliances, and distrust towards state and extractive companies tend to increase resistance, while economic marginalisation, corporate social responsibility activities, remoteness and attachment to place have mixed effects. Systematic assessments of these factors could further confirm patterns of resistance, clarify the needs for local consent processes, and help inform the creation of ’no-go’ areas for mining projects to the mutual benefit of companies, communities, and government authorities otherwise affected by socio-environmental impacts and costly deadlocks.
How can we get inside popular collective struggles and explain how they work? Contentious Performances presents a distinctive approach to analyzing such struggles, drawing especially on incomparably rich evidence from Great Britain between 1758 and 1834. The book accomplishes three main things. First, it presents a logic and method for describing contentious events, occasions on which people publicly make consequential claims on each other. Second, it shows how that logic yields superior explanations of the dynamics in such events, both individually and in the aggregate. Third, it illustrates its methods and arguments by means of detailed analyses of contentious events in Great Britain from 1758 to 1834.
This paper builds on the case study work into conflict between mining firms and nearby communities through a statistical analysis of the determinants of social conflict at the local level in the mining sector in Latin America. The analysis is based on an original dataset of 640 geo-located mining properties at the advanced exploration stage and above, which includes GIS information on environment and land-use patterns around the property, sub-national socio-economic characteristics of the population, firm and mining property characteristics, as well as information about known social conflicts.
