Corporate Governance and the ‘New Sustainable Yanahuara’
Schedule
Tue Jan 16 2024 at 01:00 pm to 02:30 pm
Location
AQ5067, Ellen Gee Room, Burnaby Campus, Simon Fraser University | Burnaby, BC
About this Event
Join us for the Spring 2024 Colloquium Series Part I - Corporate Governance and the ‘New Sustainable Yanahuara’: minerals, desires, and neoliberalism in the southern Andes of Peru
Guest Speaker: Kieran Gilfoy, SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Sociology and Anthropology at SFU
Date & Time: January 16, 2024 (Tuesday) | 1pm - 2:30pm Pacific Time
Location: Hybrid - AQ 5067, Ellen Gee Room, Burnaby Campus & on Zoom
Abstract:
Today the production and consumption of minerals has reached historic levels as states and companies attempt to deliver ongoing prosperity to citizens and shareholders. The contemporary demand for resources has seen extractive industries delve further and further into rural regions on the margins of global capitalism. More often than not, corporations are entering into quasi-governance roles, where historical isolation and neglect infuse and complicate relations between industry and local communities.
In the highlands of eastern Apurímac, Peru, the Chinese mining consortium MMG has charted these precarious tensions for years. The Bambas copper mine, which commenced production in 2015, promised an end to endemic poverty amidst the forgotten province of Cotabambas. And while the company has proudly bandied about promotional materials and statistics on its contributions to local development – often couched under the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) banner of ‘mining for progress’ – conflicts have flared throughout the region, challenging narratives of responsible mining. Indeed, the fostering and support of ‘Yanahuara’ peoples and cultures masks notions of historical redress and social progress for campesino communities that surround the Bambas mine.
Moving beyond the public presentation of ‘mining for progress’, this presentation will show what sustainable ‘gifts’ and cultural revival events – the dualistic concoction of a ‘new sustainable Yanahuara’ – do within Cotabambas. It is argued that the corporate ‘fantasy of frictionless profits’ forces MMG to use CSR norms and practices to shape, blunt, and direct excess desires emanating from local communities, delineating what can and cannot be expected of a corporation operating within a state governance vacuum. Ultimately, the corporation attempts to channel community demands towards the predictable ‘canon pay-off’ but retains the right to violence and police intervention should unruly populations – and entanglements with them – risk the smooth extraction and transportation of copper.
About the Speaker:
Kieran Gilfoy is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at SFU. His research focuses on the entanglements of resources and peoples, in particular, using minerals as an ethnographic vehicle to explore questions on labor and life. He completed his DPhil at the University of Oxford, investigating the stark discordances of extractive development for local peoples in the Apurímac region of southern Peru. His current research project looks at the local lifeworlds of garimpeiros (wildcat gold miners) in the eastern Amazon of Brazil, exploring the social histories and existential imperatives which inform their perennial wandering in search of gold.
The Zoom link will be sent out on January 15, 2024 (Monday). I f you have any questions, please contact SA Communications Coordinator at [email protected].
Simon Fraser University respectfully acknowledges the unceded traditional territories including, the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish), səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations, on which SFU Vancouver is located.
Where is it happening?
AQ5067, Ellen Gee Room, Burnaby Campus, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Dr, Burnaby, CanadaEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
