Mining in the land of Buen Vivir The politics of large-scale mining, development and territorial transformation in the Ecuadorian Amazon

This dissertation aims to understand the politics of mining expansion and development around the Mirador project, the first large-scale mining project being developed within the Ecuadorian context of the upsurge of “progressive” development policies. To do so, the dissertation applies an ethnographic research methodology to the Mirador project, and engages theoretical insights from debates on territory; power and governmentality; and critical development studies. The thesis is structured as follows: after two chapters on the political and local context of the case, the next two chapters focus on the proponents of the Mirador project and how they have intended to govern nature and people – and the relation between these – through politics of knowledge and subject-making. The following two chapters, in turn, delve into the – highly diverse – responses of the inhabitants of communities nearby the Mirador project to the discourses and practices of the mine’s proponents. Using a micro-political ecology approach, these chapters analyse the discourses and practices of those who contested the territorial transformations that the project generated, as well as of those who did not resist mining, or even supported it. The conclusions highlights how this detailed study of the Mirador case contributes to the understanding of power dynamics in mining conflicts, and adds new perspectives to the literature on mining by drawing on insights from debates on territory, power, and micro-political ecology. Finally, the attention to community responses that go beyond resistance is considered an innovation since these interactions largely overlooked in the literature on mining conflicts.