Response to Fabiana Li’s review of Mining Capitalism

I would like to thank the book review editor, Taylor Nelms, and my counterpart in this exchange, Fabiana Li, for the opportunity to continue this discussion. Let me paraphrase and respond to the questions she raises in her thoughtful review of my book.

Does comparison and generalization about the mining industry risk glossing over the country-specific politics of extractivism? As social scientists, shouldn’t anthropologists try to produce generalizable knowledge when possible? Most accounts of the mining industry are already focused on particular countries or regions, like Li’s book on mining in Peru or the literature I cite about mining in Melanesia. But when I started working with NGOs that represent communities affected by mining in different countries around the world, I learned that there were more similarities than differences in their experiences. The parallels were quite robust. There is ample reason for this, too. Not only do mining projects have similar environmental impacts, but these resource conflicts bear a family resemblance to each other in part because the mining industry is international in scope. The markets that influence their decisions are also global, including metal prices. The major corporate players are active in most regions of the world. Junior miners pursue similar strategies regardless of where they are based and operate. Skilled labor in the mining industry circulates between operations on different continents. When these interactions involve indigenous peoples, there are additional similarities, because indigenous politics is increasingly international in scope (Niezen 2003). The NGO community figured out most of this during the early 2000s with the emergence of the international networks I describe in the book, although the academy is somewhat late to the party.¹ Yes, we should study resource extraction in context, as I have done, but we also need to look beyond the state (see Trouillot 2001) to understand the forces that influence corporate decision-making, including pressure from global markets; multilateral policies regarding resource extraction, environmental impacts and indigenous rights; and the need for corporations to respond to their critics, many of whom are operating in the same global space. It is also necessary to recognize that the lifespan of most large-scale mining projects – from exploration through construction, production, and closure – is likely to exceed current economic cycles or political trends. In other words, corporations are making decisions about markets that are global in scope over timespans that extend well into the future. Our analyses have to operate at multiple scales.

Can science resolve conflicts over resource extraction or does it inevitably lead to their propagation? The examples presented by Li raise important questions about the limits of scientific information. They also suggest the difficulty of trying to separate science from society. As an alternative to corporate science, we might consider another set of truth claims in which people can place their trust: history, and specifically whether the mining company in question, or even the mining industry as a whole, has been able to operate a comparable project without substantial social and environmental impacts. If one discounts the overly optimistic narratives of corporate social responsibility and rejects claims predicated on the flawed assumptions of ecological modernization theory (the view that new technologies will resolve existing environmental problems), the obvious conclusion is that the track record of the mining industry is a valuable predictor of future outcomes and may be a more reliable indicator than corporate science. Science still has an important role to play in these debates, but history may be a more accurate guide to the future.

Aren’t there more than two sides to every mining conflict? Of course. And some people change their views over time. In the Ok Tedi case, the fundamental ambivalence of the people living downstream from the mine has allowed the project to continue operating for more than three decades, with recent talk about extending the life of the mine. People initially supported the project and were reluctant to see it close down even after it began to take its toll on the environment, at least until they receive benefits commensurate with its negative impacts on their land and livelihoods. But I doubt anyone would agree to do it over again without making substantial changes to protect the environment. Are people likely to support the proposed expansion of the mine? Quite possibly, because the mining company is discussing new technology it says will finally permit construction of a tailings dam (Pascoe 2015) and because the river system has already been damaged beyond any meaningful recovery in the foreseeable future. The social movement against the Ok Tedi mine was never an anti-mining campaign; it has always focused on increasing economic benefits and reducing environmental impacts. There are certainly places in the world where people are opposed to mining under any terms or conditions, but distrust of the mining industry tends to be accompanied by doubts about the ability and/or commitment of the state to protect the environmental and economic interests of the people who are most likely to be affected by the project.

Are there gains to be made from demanding change, even if they are incremental? Yes, I think this is what one can ask for and expect in the short run. Will that satisfy critics or solve the larger problem? No, especially given how clever corporations have become at avoiding additional costs or restrictions, which often cancels out anticipated benefits from the changes.

Is the difference between perspectives in these mining conflicts more than just deliberate manipulation and cooptation? I agree with Li that there are differences in perspective that lead the opposing sides in these debates to see something different even when they are looking at the same thing. Take the example of a river downstream from a mining project. The water may have a different pH than before and the river may carry a higher sediment load, but to mining engineers, these may be differences that do not make a difference. The people living downstream may draw a different conclusion: not only do these changes alter their resources, they also diminish their value. The two sides see something different when they look at the water in the river. The mining company may say that the water was never fit for drinking, even though the people living downstream recall drinking from the river and know that they will probably have to drink from it in the future; they do not always have alternatives. Paradoxically, mining companies may invoke standards for copper levels established to protect municipal water systems, even though the same levels of copper may be harmful to riverine life or have a deleterious effect on algae levels. These differences might be seen as analogous to current debates in anthropology about ontology and perspectivism: what the mining company sees as a resource for its own use may be seen as something very different by others, like the way some people in Peru may only see a mountain, whereas others see the mountain as an apu, or living being (see de la Cadena 2015). But when a mining company transforms a resource for its own purposes, it may preclude others from continuing to use it as they have in the past.² The mining company has the power to impose its interpretation and use natural resources as it sees fit, ensuring that its economic needs are met, even if this comes at the expense of the people already living there, but not vice versa. As long as this remains the case, conflict over resource extraction is likely to continue.

Does polarization lead to resignation? Are resource conflicts the problem? Here the work of Bebbington and Bury (2009) on resource conflicts in Peru is instructive. They argue that civil society can serve as a feedback loop that provides the state with information it needs to reform a flawed system. In their view, resolving these conflicts requires persuading the state to recognize the value of this information and reform its policies accordingly, instead of criminalizing protest. In other words, mining conflicts are essential to the solution rather than part of the problem. Corporations are not going to change on their own despite their narratives of spontaneous self-enlightenment or the economic rationalization of the business case for social responsibility (Kirsch 2015). They are far more likely to devote their time and resources to domesticating their opposition than reducing their environmental impacts. States rarely stand up for their citizens on these issues.³ Consequently, change or improvement is highly unlikely without continued pressure. As I argue in Mining Capitalism, the interactions between corporations and their critics have become a fundamental dynamic of the contemporary global economy. The only hope for better outcomes is to continue fighting for them.

Returning to Li’s initial question about comparison, the paired format of these reviews makes me think not only about the relationship between cases, but also the differences between ethnographic projects. One of the insights from Unearthing Conflict is that the invocation of science may lead to the proliferation of disputes rather than their resolution. Another way of saying this is that science multiplies perspectives. This seems to apply to both the scientific practices described by Li as well as our ethnographies. Writing about interdisciplinarity, Strathern (2006) makes an important observation about anthropology: that it does not try to identify the best way to learn about social relations, but rather promotes multiple ways of doing so. Her point is that we benefit from the diversity of perspectives. The same might be said of the two ethnographies reviewed here. What Fabiana Li sees when she is studying and writing about mining conflicts is not always the same as what I see. We are not necessarily asking or trying to answer the same questions. Although we may encourage each other to expand or contract our respective frames of reference, whether her commitment to studying the national context of mining conflicts or my interest in understanding the role corporations play in the contemporary global economy, this is tension that need not be resolved in favor of one position or the other. It is precisely because of our differences that reading her ethnography offers me new perspectives on otherwise familiar dynamics. The purpose of articulating these differences in our reviews is not, in my opinion, to choose sides, but rather to benefit from their juxtaposition. Similarly, in contrast to my history of political engagement, the goal of Mining Capitalism is not to end discussion of these conflicts, but rather to offer new perspectives that may have analytical value as well as political utility, while also contributing to our understanding of corporations and contemporary capitalism.

ORCID

Stuart Kirsch http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3448-1979

Notes

1 Even long-term critics of the NGO community have recently begun to acknowledge that the NGOs may have been right all along: ‘Environmental destruction, social discord, widespread corruption, and new inequalities have been the legacies of every mining project in Papua New Guinea to date’ (Macintyre 2015, 143; emphasis added).

2 What I call ‘colliding ecologies’ in Mining Capitalism (Kirsch 2014).

3 Ironically, the only two countries to ban open-pit mining have both been sued under provisions of the Central American Free Trade Act, with mining companies demanding compensation from the state for investment in proposed projects that were halted on environmental grounds (Broad 2015; Broad and Cavanaugh 2015).