Kalowatie Deonandan & Michael L. Dougherty (ed.): Mining in Latin America: critical approaches to the new extraction
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BOOK REVIEW
Kalowatie Deonandan & Michael L. Dougherty (ed.): Mining in Latin America: critical approaches to the new extraction Routledge Studies of the Extractive Industries and Sustainable Development, Routledge, 2016, ISBN: 9780367173203 (paperback), 9781138921672 (hardback), 9781315686226 (ebook) Håkan Tarras-Wahlberg 1
# Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
In spite of its title, this is not a book for those who want to have a clear understanding of where, how and why mining is performed in Latin America. This does not mean it is a book without interest, rather that the second part of the title is more revealing than the first. In the main, the book comprises chapters written by Canada and US-based social scientists concerned with political economy and where mining activities are analysed within the framework of “new extraction”, which in turn is defined as the recently and ongoing “era of multinational investment in the global south”. Much of the focus is on troublesome and high-profile projects, which involve western (mostly Canadian) firms and based on these case studies, a bleak picture is painted that includes unfair sharing of benefits, environmental impacts and local resistance to mining. The overarching theoretical framework is that of post-colonial extractivism, where western companies in the core economies—again mostly Canada— assisted by home country governments, in liaison with sometime illegitimate Latin American governments, and encouraged by a global neoliberal entente, are robbing the peripheral Latin American countries of their mineral wealth, and doing so against the will of affected communities. This way of looking at the world—with a core and an exploited periphery—holds considerable explanatory power when studying post-colonial history, but it may not be sufficient when it comes to understanding how the Latin American mining sector has developed over the last decade and a bit. The fact that the rise of China as an economic power drove (and is driving) the expansion of the world’s mining sector—
* Håkan Tarras-Wahlberg [email protected] 1
Swedish Geological AB, Stockholm, Sweden
although mentioned in the introduction—is overlooked by many of the authors, and blame for the ills caused by mining is in the main directed towards western mining capital centres, companies and governments. The stated intention is to be multi-disciplinary and this is of course laudable. Many of us are guilty of at times working in silos, and we may not always do enough to communicate and/ or share ideas with those outside our respective fields of expertise. Unfortunately, in spite of its intentions, this book does the same. The net is thrown wide, but there are few signs that the authors—pretty much all social scientists, as mentioned— have enlisted assistance from experts who know how mining is performed or have a deeper understanding of the relevant terminology. Examples of misunderstandings and/or misuse of terminology are scattered throughout many of the chapters, and of
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