Doctoral Dissertation Research: Mining at the Margins: Extractive Industry and Local Governance

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In frontier regions worldwide, natural resource extraction often displaces and resettles rural communities. Because the institutional state may be distant from these territories, claims to sovereignty and the right to exert regulatory power often get worked out locally. These evolving relationships raise important questions about the nature of government in the contemporary world and the capacities of communities to establish and evaluate political legitimacy. The research funded by this award addresses these questions by taking advantage of an interesting natural experiment in a coal-mining region in northeastern Colombia. Vanderbilt University doctoral student Emma Banks, under the supervision of Dr. Lesley Gill, will undertake the research in a frontier region of Colombia that, for over two decades, has been home to a major open pit coalmine. The mine has displaced communities from their communal rural territories and resettled them in peri-urban villages. Usefully for research purposes, these communities contrast with each other along two significant axes: how recently they have been displaced and whether they are ethnically Afro-descendant or indigenous Indians. Taking advantage of these contrasts, Banks will gather data in four communities that contrast along those lines: two communities resettled earlier, one of each ethnicity; and two resettled more recently, again, once of each ethnicity. This will allow her to see how local political processes evolve over time and how this evolution is affected by the resources accessible by people in different social positions. Banks will compare the legal resources, ethnic identity politics, and alliance networks used by each community to legitimize authority, make the impacts of resettlement visible, and influence resettlement outcomes. To find and compare evidence of legitimacy building, she will conduct participant observation at roundtable meetings between the mine and communities, and interview mine officials, state officials, and community members. To contextualize these findings, she will also carry out archival research and conduct in-depth life history interviews with community members. These data will allow her to better understand a phenomenon found worldwide, including in the United States: how communities and natural resource corporations, away from the direct government control, negotiate legitimacy and influence each other. Findings from this research will inform social science theory of how local politics functions at the local level in the contemporary world. Findings will also be of use to policy makers who seek to devise ways to support resource extraction without disadvantaging citizens and communities.