Can Oil Speak? On the Production of Ontological Difference and Ambivalence in Extractive Encounters

Bovensiepen, Judith M.

doi:10.1353/anq.2021.0013

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 16 publications

(18 reference statements)

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“…A coupled-human-nature system framework thus examines the interaction and feedback loop between natural and human systems governance. This framework has caused us to think, along with many others, that humanity is part of the ontological totality including the environment (Bovensiepen, 2021;Hornborg, 2015Hornborg, , 2019. This implies that mining activities and climate change mediated by power asymmetries have an environmental impact, which reshapes the socioecological systems.…”

Section: Literature Reviewsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The intersecting impact of mining operations and climate change on sustainable livelihoods at the extraction frontiers of Ghana

Pakmoni

Udimal

Hussein

et al. 2023

Preprint

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Mining operations in developing countries are situated within complex ecological and social dynamics and are exacerbated by the multiplier effects of climate change. This paper explores the intersecting impact of mining activities and climate change, mediated by the politics of power on the rural livelihoods and the environment. Applying the qualitative research approach using focus group discussion, interviews, and document reviews. The results show that a) the impacts of mining exploitation and climate change intersect and manifest in altering the dynamics of the environment and ecosystems, resulting in adverse societal outcomes; b) the expansion of mining operations is determined by power politics and the search for resource rent and profits. This extraction process continues with little regard for rural livelihoods and good environmental stewardship. This paper argues that if the conjoint impact of mining activities with climate change threats is not handled well, it may reconfigure rural livelihood portfolios in extraction enclaves. Thus, creating a new site for struggle and contestation over resources never seen before in resource-rich countries of Africa. This paper contends that it is possible to conceptualize a sustainable mining pathway that mitigates the "multiplier threat " of climate change and mining activities on rural populations and the environment.

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Section: Literature Reviewsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The intersecting impact of mining operations and climate change on sustainable livelihoods at the extraction frontiers of Ghana

Pakmoni

Udimal

Hussein

et al. 2023

Preprint

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“…Creative motivation and expression became yoked to economic control when the first cultural village was established. Similarly, Bovensiepen (2020) writes about how the advent of resource extraction among rural people in Timor-Leste's south coast produced the articulation of clear-cut (solid) positions between animism and naturalism, displacing previous more ambivalent (liquid) relations with the inhabited environment. 16 16 Countless other examples exist; e.g.…”

Section: Working With Solidity and Liquidity In Regulatory Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Liquid regulation: the (men's) business of women's water music?

Forsyth

Dick²

2021

International Journal of Law in Context

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Complexity and uncertainty often animate the desire for regulatory approaches seeking to fix, limit and constrain. But what if, instead of doubling down on ‘solid’ regulation, we also make room for ‘liquid’ regulatory approaches? We interrogate this question through deep empirical analysis of the developing regulatory framework around a form of Melanesian cultural property known as water music. We argue that, although both solid and liquid regulatory forms exist in all normative orders, we have recently seen an increasing emphasis on solid forms of regulation (legislation, registers, etc.) with respect to cultural property. As an effort to consider alternative approaches, we identify a range of liquid regulatory strategies drawing from our case-study. We show how attention to temporality, relationality and situatedness can impact upon the degree of liquidity of individual regulatory approaches, and how they can cumulatively impact the solidity or liquidity of the overall regulatory system. Finally, we identify the different ways in which gendered power and forms of accountability emerge in contexts of solid or liquid regulatory strategies.

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“…In this article, I bring anthropological research on the ontologies of climate (Farbotko 2017; Klepp 2018; Schnegg 2021) and resource extractivism (Bovensiepen 2021; Jacka 2015) into conversation with scholarship on refugee subjectivities (Cabot 2013; Häkli, Pascucci, and Pauliina Kallio 2017; Malkki 1995; Masquelier 2006). I show how experiences of environmental changes are inflected by different forms of extractivism—in particular, what I term refugee extractivism (Morris 2019, 2021b).…”

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confidence: 99%

Managing, now becoming, refugees: Climate change and extractivism in the Republic of Nauru

Morris

2022

American Anthropologist

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The Republic of Nauru, the world's smallest island state, was almost entirely economically dependent on the phosphate industry in the twentieth century as part of a colonial extractive arrangement. After the wealth Nauru derived was depleted by the 1990s, the by then sovereign state resurged on the back of the refugee industry, agreeing to process and resettle Australia's maritime asylum‐seeker populations. In this article, I explore how forms of refugee extractivism factor into Nauruans’ ontological experiences of climate change. While Nauruans are imbricated in managing refugees—with an extensive program of financialization and institutionalization in place—environmental changes are heightening the prospect of islanders becoming refugees. I argue that Nauruans’ understandings of refugeehood are entangled in the operations of a local industry in refugees but also humanitarian philanthropic portrayals. In Australian activist campaigns, Nauruans are distanced from refugees through representations of savagery and underdevelopment. These discourses intersect with how islanders see and experience refugeehood, while also revealing the fetishizing logics employed by refugee rights campaigners.

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Can Oil Speak? On the Production of Ontological Difference and Ambivalence in Extractive Encounters

Abstract: The version in the Kent Academic Repository may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check http://kar.kent.ac.uk for the status of the paper. Users should always cite the published version of record.

Cited by 6 publications

References 16 publications

The intersecting impact of mining operations and climate change on sustainable livelihoods at the extraction frontiers of Ghana

The intersecting impact of mining operations and climate change on sustainable livelihoods at the extraction frontiers of Ghana

Liquid regulation: the (men's) business of women's water music?

Managing, now becoming, refugees: Climate change and extractivism in the Republic of Nauru

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