Divergent memories and visions of the future in conflicts over mining development

Abstract

Conflicts over extractive development often center around predicting future profits and economic growth, and estimating industrial pollution. How these projections are understood and seen as legitimate and trustworthy depends on social actors' environmental imaginaries and timescapes. Thus, I examine the temporal and cultural dynamics of natural resource politics, particularly how affective connections to the past and future mobilize support and opposition to new mining. I use the case of proposed copper mines in the rural Minnesota Iron Range region to explore the different environmental imaginaries and timescapes that mining opponents and proponents use to understand the potential socio-environmental impacts, and to legitimate their positions. Proponents, including long-time and working class Iron Range residents and mining corporations, view the region as an industrial landscape built by mining and hope new proposals will renew the past to create a prosperous future. Meanwhile, environmental groups who oppose mining view the region through an environmental imaginary based on outdoor recreation, and draw on collective memories of family and youth trips to understand new extractive projects as a rupture to their vision of the future. I show that resource extraction is understood through temporalities that differ across intersections of class and region, and that emotional meanings of the past and visions of the future animate contemporary political action.Keywords: Resource extraction, mining, environmental imaginaries, timescapes, collective memory, environmental politics, emotions

Anticipating lithium extraction in northern Portugal: A Sacrifice Zone in the making?

“…When we inquired about the mining heritage in Barroso from an anti-mining activist in Covas do Barroso, he emphasized how these memories shape the way he anticipates the future: "We are aware of our mining heritage and that is exactly why we are fighting against the mines" (Interview 27). This link between past experiences with mining and communities' expectations towards extractive futures has been invoked in several other studies, where memories are understood as an affective, temporal dimension of place which is mobilized towards political controversies (Kojola, 2020;Morosin, 2020). While many interviewees associated Barroso's mining heritage with destruction, the memories of improved living conditions expressed by a supporter illustrate how perceptions on place identity -specifically interpretations of its past -can differ tremendously based on individual timescapes (Kojola, 2020).…”

“…An insightful example of the role of place identity in the context of extractive industries is Kojola's study on opposition and support towards proposed copper mines in rural Minnesota in the USA, in which he analyzes the affective dimensions of anticipation and illustrates how these intersect with local understandings of place (Kojola, 2020). His study demonstrates that places are deeply embedded in temporalities, namely individual or collective interpretations of the past and future, which the author analyzes as "place-based timescapes" (ibid., p. 911).…”

“…It will affect our image" (Interview 6). Perceptions of Barroso's agricultural heritage and traditional preservation methods in relation to anticipated impacts illustrate how the construction of place identity is deeply embedded in timescapes (Kojola, 2020): Barroso is understood in the context of its history, with an evident sense of responsibility towards ancestors to carry on sustainable agricultural practices that have been established over past centuries. Life in Barroso was described in several interviews through nostalgic memories that signal strong affective connections to the region, a finding that shows the emotional and cultural significance of place and has commonly been reported in the literature on 'place attachment' (Conde & Le Billon, 2017;Svobodova et al, 2021).…”

Ambiguous Matter

“…Living among former industrial sites also fosters diverse and often ambiguous community memories and heterogeneous associations that cannot be reduced into a homogenised whole (Storm 2014;Wråkberg 2019). As such, in active and former mining regions human and nonhuman actors have to negotiate with mine waste in how future development is imagined and carried out (Kojola 2020;Measham et al 2021), how some mine waste becomes revalued from waste into potential products (Quivik 2013;Bleicher et al 2019) and how persistent legacies of mine waste are managed and cared for (Hudson-Edwards et al 2011;Ureta 2016a;Ureta and Flores 2018), possibly for an eternity as the heavy 4 materiality of mine waste becomes an ever-present reality for all future generations (Beckett & Keeling 2018;Keeling & Sandlos 2017).…”