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This article explores the consolidation of industrial mining in Latin America, documenting the strategies that mining companies have used to deepen and widen extractive frontiers in Ecuador and Peru. Based on original fieldwork in the Andean highlands, we find that companies deployed payments, land purchases, and small gifts – or regalitos– to destabilize important norms governing reciprocity, community, and the commons, leading to significant conflict among community members. Our analysis contributes to a contemporary political economy that examines the ways in which mining companies use land purchases and gift giving to manipulate processes of community conflict, decision making and social consent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social conflicts stemming from industrial mining projects in Peru have increasingly been fought in court cases in recent years. This article analyzes the dark side of this judicialization of mining conflicts, a process through which state authorities criminalize participation in social protests and attempt to prevent the mobilization of social movements. This use of the law by public authorities is an example of the so-called shrinking space in which the scope of action of civil society actors is increasingly restricted and constrained worldwide. This article presents an in-depth analysis of a specific court case against a group of mining opponents in the Cajamarca region of Peru. Based on ethnographic field research conducted in Peru, the article discusses three different modalities of the law’s domination, exploring the various ways the law rules those who oppose large-scale extractive projects.

Using an activist-orientated dataset (the EJAtlas) of place-based mining resistances, we conduct a statistical analysis of 346 mining conflicts around the world to better understand patterns and conditions associated with activist perceptions of environmental justice (EJ) in mining conflicts. Our study uses a large set of variables, including location, project and conflict characteristics, impacts and resistance attributes. The results show that controlling for other factors, conflict intensity, timing of mobilisation, the centrality of the company in the network, conflict events, project status and the presence of international financial organisations are significant correlates of perceived EJ success. We find that mobilising during the prevention stage, and high-intensity reactions, as well as the ability to halt a project, are positively associated with perceived EJ success. In turn, the intensity of the mobilisation relates to immediate potential socio-economic and environmental impacts, and the presence of excluded and marginalised groups, whereas stopping a project relates to the timing of mobilisation and institutional contexts. We discuss these findings in the light of the literature on political ecology and social movements. We hope that our analysis will help those who seek evidence-based support for EJ activism and prompt further inquiry on mining politics in the world.

Social conflicts stemming from industrial mining projects in Peru have increasingly been fought in court cases in recent years. This article analyzes the dark side of this judicialization of mining conflicts, a process through which state authorities criminalize participation in social protests and attempt to prevent the mobilization of social movements. This use of the law by public authorities is an example of the so-called shrinking space in which the scope of action of civil society actors is increasingly restricted and constrained worldwide. This article presents an in-depth analysis of a specific court case against a group of mining opponents in the Cajamarca region of Peru. Based on ethnographic field research conducted in Peru, the article discusses three different modalities of the law’s domination, exploring the various ways the law rules those who oppose large-scale extractive projects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In the context of a global expansion of the extractive frontier, building broad protest coalitions is key for emancipatory and non-extractive future transformations of the countryside. Yet even though movements in both the agrarian and the mining sector struggle against the enclosure of land and the loss of livelihoods in rural areas, inter-sectoral coalitions remain scarce. This chapter therefore aims to identify challenges to inter-sectoral coalition building between movements struggling against extractive projects in the agrarian and the mining sector. Based on a case study of Senegal it shows that mutually exclusive identities, missing ‘bridge builders’, and different policy spaces constitute key challenges for the building of coalitions. Furthermore, extraction plays out differently in the agrarian and in the mining sector. Different regulations and economic histories as well as distinct impacts of extractive activities on land and nature provide different incentives and challenges for claim making in the two sectors. In order to understand resistance to extraction, it is therefore key to stay attuned to the different impacts extractive investments have on the ground.

Copyright of Journal of Latin American & Caribbean Anthropology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Although many studies focus on environmental conflict and debates around sustainable development, more research is needed to deepen the understanding of the links between the frames upheld by actors involved in environmental conflicts and governance processes. We propose a dialogue between political ecology and governance to study how divergent valuations of the environment shape intense and long‐term mining conflicts and impact on environmental governance. Focusing on the case of La Alumbrera in Argentina, we argue that three factors disrupt environmental governance and deepen the conflict: divergent valuations that consolidate a growing distance among the images portrayed by the actors; the unequal emphasis that the actors place on the problems and solutions that mining generates; and the inability of the state and mining corporations to process the notions of difference that emerge from the territories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A recurring question within literature on resource conflicts is how to explain the origins of local opposition. Many studies begin with the arrival of mining interests. In this paper, however, I situate a conflict over proposed copper mining in northwestern Ecuador in relation to histories of agrarian settlement. Though the prospect of mining first emerged in the early 1990s, I trace the origins of this conflict to sugar cane in the 1940s. Drawing attention to processes of agrarian change, I demonstrate how local actors have generated the literal and metaphorical fields upon which this conflict has played out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]