Frontiers of capital: Mining, mobilization, and resource governance in Andean Peru

This dissertation explores the complex relations between recent reconfigurations of mineral resource governance in Andean Peru and the struggles of populations in areas affected by mining to exercise control over where, when, how, and under what conditions extraction is carried out. I approach this issue through an analysis of the history of mine-community dynamics at the Pierina Project, a large-scale gold mine located in the north-central Peruvian Andes. Organizing my analysis around four axes of contestation—land, water, labor and development—that have been central to community struggles at Pierina, I find that the consolidation of a neoliberalized resource governance regime has afforded the mining firm considerable authority to define the terms of engagement for mining-related struggle. In particular, I illustrate how the trend towards privatized and informal governance mechanisms has made claims-making a frustrating affair for community residents, thus constraining their ability to shape decisions about mining and its impacts. This suggests not only that social and political power is exercised through the arrangements of resource governance, but also that these arrangements themselves are expressions of such power. Throughout the study, I advance an approach that blends an assessment of broader-scale regulatory change with an ethnographically oriented account of the micro-politics—and power-laden practices—of mineral resource governance.