Relocating regulation: Environmental politics and the Montana gold mining industry

This dissertation argues that economies emerge and operate as part of a multitude of cultural and political processes. This approach starts with regulation theory as an approach yet, instead of reifying the prophecy of capitalist accumulation as a function of structure, I explicate how the logic of economic systems and extant institutions emerge, develop, perform and change. In my view, economic systems are indeterminant. That is, in as much as capitalist accumulation is tied to or guided by structural rationalities, it is also beholden to ideas that actors possess in certain places and times. My objective, then, is to relocate the structural “logic” of capitalist accumulation and understand economic systems as products of structures and ideas without the rigidities of a traditional regulationist framework. The regulation of capitalist accumulation is thus rendered emergent and dynamic.; To develop this relocated regulation approach I analyze the historical and contemporary development of Montana's gold mining economy. The analysis focuses on the actors that develop and utilize ideas that influence the regulation of this economic system. The focal point for regulating the gold mining economy has, in recent years, turned on mining-environment relationship. The manifestation of these struggles is found in the Montana gold mine permitting process. More importantly, the political struggle to define what precisely the mining-environment relationship has transformed the permitting process, resulting in an accumulation crisis for the mining industry. What happened to the mine permitting process?; To answer this question I: (1) track ideas about the mining-environment relationship historically through its current institutional regulation, and (2) examine the relationships between people's ideas regarding economy, material landscapes, and their place within these contexts through their discourses. Specifically, the development and transformation of environmental ideas in the mine permitting process is analyzed through two case studies: the Zortman-Landusky mine process and the New World process. My research suggests that crises of accumulation can come from the realm of ideas. Firm profitability or institutional exhaustion are not the culprits of the industry's malaise, rather it is the regulatory understanding of the mining-environment relationship.