Meanings of mining : a political ecologist' approach on the regulation of artisanal and small-scale gold mining in Southern Ecuador

Abstract

This thesis is concerned with the regulation of artisanal and small-scale mining in Portovelo- Zaruma (P-Z) in the South-Western corner of Ecuador. With the use of political ecology and an ethnographic approach I argue that there are substantial shortcomings to the existent apolitical research on this context and the governmental regulation that is informed by the latter. The thesis analyses the historical trajectory of mining activity in Porto and how it evolved into its current composition. It is argued that the co-existence of different forms of mining is the bedrock for a highly complex situation which governmental regulations struggle to acknowledge and effectively confront. The thesis follows this complexity with a focus on the enforcement of regulation and the responses it creates in the local setting. I argue that current governmental regulations are: 1) problematically affiliated with natural science blaming artisanal miners for the environmental degradation, and 2) representative for a rationality of corporate social responsibility. The outcome of this leads regulators away from acknowledging internal power relations and the political dimension in which this resource governance is embedded. Accordingly, I expose these relations and situate their respective claims and dynamics in divergent epistemological traditions. My objective in this thesis is three-folded: 1) to confront and complement the dominance of apolitical research that obscure the socio-political complexity of the field, 2) to expand on the theory of interlegality in contexts of artisanal and small-scale mining, and 3) to highlight and recognize the importance of situated perspectives in the tradition of political ecology