Don't wake up the dragon! Monstrous geontologies in a mining waste impoundment

Bibliographic Data

ID4475650
AuthorsSebastián Ureta (0000-0003-3169-4992, Alberto Hurtado University, corresponding author), Patricio Flores (Alberto Hurtado University)
Year2018
Volume36
Issue6
Pages1063-1080
Publication date2018-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEnvironment and Planning D Society and Space (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0263-7758 • E-ISSN: 1472-3433
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0263775818780373
OpenAlexW2805997230
LanguageEN
Citations received20
References cited26

This paper is an invitation to view tailings - the most prominent byproduct generated by mining activity - as more than their usual incarnation as waste, object of governance by waste management programs. In doing so, it applies Elizabeth Povinelli's notions about geontopower/geontologies to analyze the practices devoted to managing the tailings produced by Mina El Teniente, a large copper mine located in central Chile. From this framework, the mine's tailings impoundment are enacted as both a "dragon" and a "trickster", entities endowed with a monstrous vitality that openly challenges the mining industry's usual geontologies, which are based on understanding impoundments as docile nonliving deserts very much open to capitalist exploitation/forgetting. On the contrary, the dragon/trickster enacts a geontology in which human beings appear as ultimately unable to truly control nonliving entities, and depend only on their goodwill to avoid environmental disaster. The acceptance of such a geontology, as will be explored in the conclusions, challenges us to develop a geo-teratology, or a set of alternative political and ethical commitments we should devise in order to start better living with the monstrous geontologies of mining waste

Business · Corporate governance · Environmental ethics · Order (exchange · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Tailings · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Mining and Resource Management · Water Governance and Infrastructure