Rethinking Extraction : A Lefebvrian Critique of Sustainable Mining Discourse

Abstract

Sustainable Mining (SM) has gained increasing traction in the past two decades as an industry-based response to concerns over operational pollution, the (mis)treatment of local/Indigenous communities, and a growing awareness of finite mineral stocks. Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) is currently the theory of choice for thinking about and implementing change at the industrial level. However, I argue that Henri Lefebvre’s theory of space production illuminates the serious limitations of such approaches. Lefebvre challenges the dominant modern understanding of space as a neutral, passive, empty container. He argues that it is a socially produced realization of particular modes of spatial production. Society produces its own space, which facilitates and constrains different forms of life. CSR remains mired in that abstract and reductive spatialization exemplified by extractive processes that have made, and continue to make, spaces unliveable for communities around the world. I suggest Lefebvre’s work offers a quite different way of thinking about sustainability itself, not as an abstract balancing act between three distinct pillars – economy, society, environment, but in terms of how these are, in actuality, always already combined together in and through different modes of spatial production. Sustainability then becomes about ensuring continuously livable spaces rather than economic growth.

Presenters

Yanis Aouamri
Student, PhD, Queen's University, Ontario, Canada

Details

Presentation Type

Paper Presentation in a Themed Session

Theme

Economic, Social, and Cultural Context

KEYWORDS

URBAN STUDIES, ENVIRONMENTAL PHILOSOPHY, SUSTAINABILITY, CSR, EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRIES

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