GROUT

GROUT will explore the expansion of mining frontiers to the periphery of inhabited towns and cities. Whilst a lot is known about conflicts in rural and less populated areas, it is only recently that in so-called ‘first world’ economies like Europe, mining is approaching densely populated areas. The relocation of the city of Kiruna in Sweden to make way for an iron mine showcases the increasing interest in raw material extraction in Europe – and the imperative to extract where the resource is located, be it in urban areas or not. With mining advancing to densely populated areas where governance structures are characterized by high complexity and different needs further complicates this endeavor.

Research team: Marta Conde

To tackle this, this fellowship will act as grout  merging four interdisciplinary fields:

1. Resource governance; placing emphasis on the importance of “reciprocal sharing of resources and knowledges” in participatory and multi-stakeholder processes (MSP)
2. Political ecology, While the study of power is at the core of political ecology, much attention has been paid to resistance movements. This project will explore the role played by the companies and the state in these participatory processes.
3. Environmental Justice organisations in resource extraction conflicts tend to have different demands to those in urban contexts. By examining peri-urban resource extraction this fellowship will cast light into the specific EJ implications and power imbalances.
4. planetary urbanisation theses will show how increasing activities are being re-located to peri-urban areas becoming the ‘back office’ of urbanisation, facilitating the continued expansion of urban networks.

Marta Conde (Marie Curie Senior Postdoctoral Research Fellow) will learn and use resource governance theories from experts at the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining (CSRM) at The University of Queensland (UQ) in Australia (outgoing 2 year phase). In order to understand the implications of this mining advancing to urban areas Marta Conde will gain expertise on critical urban studies and urban environmental justice (EJ) with the Institute of Science and Environmental Technology (ICTA) at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. Merging these theses with political ecology the project will advance theory and analysis in the new theoretical field of Resource Urbanisation Governance (RUG) that will explore the transformations ‘subjects’ and institutions are encountering in these urbanizing resource frontiers.

A mixed methodological approach will combine qualitative and participative methods that will answer the following questions:

• Who are the subjects of Resource Urbanisation?
• What are the governance implications and main challenges of resource urbanisation? What is the role of mining companies?

With a particular emphasis on gender the project will explore the positionality, narratives and specific demands used by women and gender or intersectional power dynamics in participatory governance.

The project will analyse the transformations in resource urbanisation governance exploring

• the positioning of subjects (demands, narratives, capacity to participate in decision-making)
• the constitution, functions and processes of institutions (organisations, collaborations, participatory processes), and the
• relative power positions and how they are asserted (e.g. avenues for ascendance or descent in power struggles)