Workshop: Societal Aspects of Mining and Other Extractive Processes

Macalester College, Saint Paul MN

Investigators

Abstract

General Audience Summary The aim of this workshop is to bring together scholars whose work addresses technologies, practices, and forms of knowledge related to the mining of minerals, groundwater and fossil fuels. The workshop will be held in November 2016 at the Colorado School of Mines over a three-day period. Its goal is to define a new subfield in Science, Technology, and Society (STS) on subterranean extraction. The workshop will highlight the theoretical and topical commonalities as well as disagreements and debates that make the study of mining and extraction a vibrant, emerging subfield. Workshop participants will include mining and extraction experts as discussants and field trip leaders. Workshop organizers will develop a public website that includes the workshop agenda, conference papers, an executive summary of the event, and a video of the keynote address, which will be live streamed. The organizers have plans to draw audience members from the dense network of industry practitioners in the Front Range, which is home to many mining, oil and gas, and other energy companies. They also plan to prepare an edited volume that includes new and existing STS work on mining and subterranean extraction. Technical Summary The workshop will focus on societal aspects of extractive processes of mining and other forms of natural resource development, which is a potentially rich new area for the field of STS. The existing scholarship on extraction from anthropology, geography and environmental studies provides important insights on the social and environmental dimensions of natural resource production, especially the consequences of this development for vulnerable communities. Yet these fields remain largely distinct from STS and rarely engage practitioners, such as scientists and engineers. STS scholars have studied recent technological developments such as high-volume hydraulic fracturing to extract oil and gas from shale, solar technologies that require rare earth metals, and even the pursuit of minerals found in asteroids. However, subterranean extraction is not yet an identifiable domain of research in STS. STS is well positioned to make an impact in this domain, opening up crucial questions about the expertise, knowledge, and power animating extractive practices. The mapping and extraction of underground resources are technoscientific practices that engage multiple, and sometimes competing, forms of expertise. An STS perspective on extraction will examine the technoscientific aspects of how questions about extraction are posed and deliberated, how extraction itself occurs, and how the consequences of such extraction are addressed. Underlying each of these areas are issues of knowledge, expertise and power that STS is uniquely positioned to explore, but has not yet done so in a systematic way.