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Emergence and Aftermath: The (Un)Becoming of Resources and Identities in Northwestern Ecuador
Author(s) -
Kneas David
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
american anthropologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.51
H-Index - 85
eISSN - 1548-1433
pISSN - 0002-7294
DOI - 10.1111/aman.13150
Subject(s) - scholarship , temporality , resource (disambiguation) , identity (music) , sociology , subject (documents) , ethnography , social identity theory , political science , social science , anthropology , law , epistemology , aesthetics , social group , computer network , philosophy , library science , computer science
Along the peripheries of mineral exploration, resources come and go, defined by periods of presence and absence. Though recent scholarship on “resource becoming” highlights the nonlinearity of subsoil resources, analyses of identity formation and resource conflict still tends to assume resource inevitability. Yet the ebbing of resource potential reflects on‐the‐ground social fields that have received little ethnographic attention. Such is the case in the Intag region of northwestern Ecuador, site of copper mineralization and an ongoing conflict over resource exploration. In this article, I examine the everyday relations between pro‐mining “ mineros ” and anti‐mining “ ecologistas ” during and after a conflict with Ascendant Copper, a junior company present between 2004 and 2008. Analyzing these local relations through the medium of social play, I describe the mediated and equivocated ways locals articulated these subject positions. This dynamic set the conditions for a distinct period of aftermath following Ascendant's departure, during which the significance of minero and ecologista subjectivities waned. While anthropologists have long approached emergent identities as processes of being and becoming, this article puts into sharper relief questions of degree and duration, highlighting the partial formation of these identities and the conditions through which they may subside. [ identity, temporality, resource becoming, mining conflict, Ecuador ]