What is the Environment Good For? The Geology, Toxicity and Finance of Mining

A great deal of research has come to be classified under the category of environment. Yet, that term seems ill-adapted for many research projects. So-called environmental issues are more often conceptualized through other categories. In this, we reflect on how the category of environment has sat with our research projects on uranium and rare earth mining in Greenland, iron ore mining in Guinea and coal mining in Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France. Geologists delineate minerals and metals according to chemical and physical properties and their spatial accessibility, and evaluate their industrial rentability forgetting they belong to a wide territory. When miners in 19th century France deal with industrial risks, safety, occupational diseases and the modes of property of common resources, they express concerns about environmental issues, although they do not make use of that term, which is barely used even among the scientific community at that time. For international mining companies, mineral resources can also simply be speculative financial assets as in the case of iron mining in Guinea. 

In all these cases, what is normally called the environment is conceptualized through other categories. Therefore, what are the analytic gains and pitfalls of applying the etic category of environment in our research projects?

Speakers : 

• Pia BAILLEUL (post-doctoral researcher, CERI) : her work lies at the intersection of mining anthropology, Arctic studies, and science and technology studies. She has specialized her research in the social and legal construction of mineral resources and the connection between climate change and extractive development in the Arctic.
• Bastien CABOT (post-doctoral researcher, CHSP) : specializing in labor movements, his researches focuses on the relationship that the labor movement and socialist organizations have with industrial modernity and its consequences. He currently conducts a comparative and international study on labor reflexivity from 1880 to 1980.
• Gustav KALM (post-doctoral researcher, Law school Research Center) : he dedicates his research to tax arbitration and global distributive justice, focusing on the case of the distribution of mining income from iron extraction in Africa.  

All three are part of the Bruno Latour Fund, a post-doctoral research programme in Sciences Po dedicated to the study of environmental and climate change.

The stream "Unboxing the environment" is coordinated by Guillaume Lachenal (medialab), Giacomo Parrinello (CHSP) and Sandrine Revet (CERI). 

Contact : aire@sciencespo.fr