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Subsoil abundance and surface absence: a junior mining company and its performance of prognosis in northwestern Ecuador
Author(s) -
Kneas David
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
journal of the royal anthropological institute
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.62
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1467-9655
pISSN - 1359-0987
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9655.12394
Subject(s) - subsoil , performative utterance , materiality (auditing) , opposition (politics) , stakeholder , corporate social responsibility , copper mining , sociology , economy , political science , public relations , aesthetics , law , economics , ecology , art , politics , chemistry , organic chemistry , copper , soil water , biology
Spectacle and performance have long characterized global mining investment. In this paper, I examine the performative strategies of a junior mining company called Ascendant Copper in its pursuit of copper in northwestern Ecuador in the mid‐2000s. I focus on Ascendant's contradictory efforts to attract mining investment with imagery of subsoil abundance while also downplaying the scale and significance of mining in the face of local opposition. I approach the company's divergent strategies as reflective of the dual meanings of prognosis, as both forecast and diagnosis. I begin by examining the means through which Ascendant promoted subsoil copper wealth within the framework of resource classification established by the Toronto Stock Exchange. I then analyse the way the company employed discourses of corporate social responsibility to portray its local presence as one defined by conservation and development. In analysing the articulation of a junior company like Ascendant in relation to both subsoil and surface, I not only highlight the materiality of corporate social responsibility, but also underscore the precarious becoming of junior companies, who seldom feature in anthropological accounts of corporations.