Rethinking ‘Canadian mining imperialism’ in Latin America

Garrod, J. Z.; Macdonald, Laura

doi:10.4324/9781315686226-6

Cited by 8 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…Mentors active in anti-imperialist movements surrounding Mexican energy, including the late Alfredo Penalosa of the Centro Nacional de Estudios de la Energia in Tabasco, have taught me that studying this industrial restructuring and the further transfer of capital from global South to North is part of my scholarly responsibility (Galeano, 1997;Girvan 2017Girvan / 1976. Indeed, in Canada, attention to what some conceptualize as Canadian imperialism (Deneault et al, 2008;Gordon and Webber, 2016), or which may alternatively be framed as the collusion of Canadian capital with extractive projects that benefit transnational and local capitalist actors (Garrod and MacDonald, 2016;Tijerina, 2017) has grown in recent years. Yet despite this sense of responsibility, in conducting field research on this topic, I am confronted with the stark contrast between my ability to travel, and relative comfort in doing so, and the living conditions facing leaders and members of a community organization in Southern Veracruz with whom I have worked with since 2004.…”

Section: A Politics Of Representation For Extractive Industry Research? Anna Zalikmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extraction, entanglements, and (im)materialities: Reflections on the methods and methodologies of natural resource industries fieldwork

Zalik

Mollett

Sultana

et al. 2020

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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This multi-authored collection of papers examines the complex realities of research on natural resource industries, including the messy entanglements of extraction, materiality, and everyday social life this research entails. Of central importance to the contributors is how scholars confront fieldwork challenges ethically, methodologically, and corporeally. The collection has two key objectives. First, it expands our understanding of extractive industry by bringing together work on resources conventionally understood as extractive (e.g. oil and minerals) alongside resource-intensive industries not typically examined through an extractive lens, for instance fisheries, agricultural monocultures, water, and tourism. As such, it considers the historical and current conditions that facilitate the extraction of resources in parallel, cyclical, and reproducing forms. Second, the collection examines scholarly positionalities, methodologies, and dilemmas that arise when studying nature-intensive industries, including the extractive dimensions associated with social research itself. Together, the pieces argue that research concerning extractive industries entails multiple scholarly positions—positions problematically inflected with colonialism and always shaped by power relations. Contributors to the section draw largely from feminist, postcolonial, anti-racist, and historical materialist insights to frame and problematize the corporeal and representational concerns arising from their scholarship on nature-intensive industries, including personal dilemmas that they have encountered in their work. Overall, the collection is driven by the realization that research, and the analyses it entails, may serve as a tool for emancipatory intervention yet also reproduce inequality. The futures of the people and ecosystems at the center of our studies impel constant reflection so that our work, and that of the next generation of scholars, may offer critical analysis that contributes to transforming—rather than reinforcing—oppressive relations associated with extractive sectors and industries.

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Section: A Politics Of Representation For Extractive Industry Research? Anna Zalikmentioning

confidence: 99%

Extraction, entanglements, and (im)materialities: Reflections on the methods and methodologies of natural resource industries fieldwork

Zalik

Mollett

Sultana

et al. 2020

Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space

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“…The United States, Macdonald concludes quite strikingly (Macdonald 2016a, p. 4), "lacks the clear political, economic, and military pre-eminence in the region that it enjoyed for most of the twentieth century." Notably, Garrod and Macdonald never explain why the supposed decline of American power means, ipso facto, that Canada is not imperialistit is simply assumed that if American hegemony has declined or disappeared so too has Canadian power (Garrod and Macdonald 2016). We would suggest, however, that it is conceivable that if Canadian power is not dependent solely on American power then a decline in the latterif such a decline is even in motion in the way Garrod and Macdonald presumedoes not by definition mean the absence of the former.…”

Section: Canada In the Worldmentioning

confidence: 99%

Canadian capital and secondary imperialism in Latin America

Gordon

Webber

2018

Canadian Foreign Policy Journal

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The last several years have witnessed a renewal of critical scholarship which understands Canada as a secondary imperialist power. While conceptualizations of Canada as a dependency of the United States have lost intellectual ground in the Canadian political economy literature, the rejection of the notion that Canada is imperialist has more recently drawn on the transnationalization thesis found in, inter alia, Robinson and Sklair. This article refutes these central premises. It argues, first, that Canadian capital can be measured as "Canadian". In turn, because there is a Canadian capitalist class we need to theorize its relationship with the Canadian state. Second, this Canadian capitalist class pursues its interests abroad, with the support of the Canadian state, as a secondary imperialist power within the hierarchical world system. Third, expansion of identifiably Canadian capital abroad is exemplified in Canadian investment trends in mining and finance in Latin America in recent decades.

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“…In Canada, an important home country for global mining investment, activists, academics and the media have drawn attention to alleged malfeasance by Canadian companies abroad. Allegations include human rights abuses committed by security personnel employed by the company or by agents of the host state (DPLF, 2014: 16-17), violation of "free, prior and informed consent" (FPIC) especially among indigenous communities (Weitzner, 2010: 93-95), fears of environmental contamination affecting human health (Urkidi and Walter, 2011), dirty dealing with host country governments, gendered impacts (Deonandan and Tatham, 2016), and complicity of the Canadian government in all of the above (Clark and North, 2006: 7;DPLF, 2014: 25-29;Garrod and Macdonald, 2016;Keenan, 2013: 116;Veltmeyer, 2013: 85-86). The recently released "Canada Brand" report on the alleged human rights abuses associated with Canadian mining firms in Latin America, produced by a team co-ordinated by Shin Imai, identified incidents involving 28 companies (44 deaths and 709 cases of criminalization) (Imai, 2017: 4, 37-41).…”

Section: A Short History Of Canadian Mining Abroadmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do Canadian Mining Firms Behave Worse Than Other Companies? Quantitative Evidence from Latin America

2018

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The effects of Canadian mining companies on local communities abroad is an increasingly contentious topic as activists and academics, citing case studies, have drawn attention to alleged problems. Despite the policy relevance of this issue, there have been no generalizable analyses of whether mining companies headquartered in Canada behave differently from mining firms headquartered in other countries. This paper conducts the first rigorous statistical analysis of the effect of country of origin, or more specifically, “being Canadian,” on the occurrence of known social conflicts in Latin America. We use an original database of 634 mining properties in five Latin American countries, which allows us to differentiate between a country-of-origin effect and other probable determinants of social conflict in communities near mining properties. We find that Canadian mining firms perform slightly better than other foreign firms, but worse than locally owned firms.

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Rethinking ‘Canadian mining imperialism’ in Latin America

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

Extraction, entanglements, and (im)materialities: Reflections on the methods and methodologies of natural resource industries fieldwork

Extraction, entanglements, and (im)materialities: Reflections on the methods and methodologies of natural resource industries fieldwork

Canadian capital and secondary imperialism in Latin America

Do Canadian Mining Firms Behave Worse Than Other Companies? Quantitative Evidence from Latin America

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