• 3 – Why was it that, in this so-­called mining country, extractive activity ended up at the center of controversy and local resistance? How did water and pollution emerge as main points of contention in these conflicts?4 This book addresses these questions by examining changing technologies and practices of mineral extraction, the deployment of expert and nonexpert knowledges in disputes over nature, and emergent forms of political activism that have accompanied mining activity in Peru.
• 4 – ​​The technologies of modern mining— ­ vast open pits and cyanide leaching processes— ­ u nearthed new entities. Mining diverted streams and irrigation canals that transformed collective organizing, while sediments and heavy metals changed the properties of water and became a focus of studies, monitoring, and management plans. A sacred mountain galvanized opposition to mining activity, and lagoons emerged as key protagonists in protests to stop mining expansion. The expansive footprint of mining operations has made bodies of water, canals, and pollutants visible and politically relevant. These entities— t ­ hough not usually recognized analytically as politically generative— mobilized ­ communities and entered into protestors’ claims over rights, enabling alliances among various actors (or preventing their collaboration).
  • Technologically driven
• In this book, I examine how modern mining technologies have brought “things” (a term I use to include other-­ than-­ human elements of the landscape) to the forefront of Peruvian politics.5 The invasive character of extractive technologies has made these new entities central players in ways that “exceed politics as we know them” (de la Cadena 2010), taking politicians and corporations by surprise.
• 6 – In this book, I examine how modern mining technologies have brought “things” (a term I use to include other-­ than-­ human elements of the landscape) to the forefront of Peruvian politics.5 The invasive character of extractive technologies has made these new entities central players in ways that “exceed politics as we know them” (de la Cadena 2010), taking politicians and corporations by surprise.
• Moving away from depictions of environmental conflict as a standoff between opposing interest groups, Kim Fortun (2001) writes about “enunciatory communities” that emerge in response to the contradictions of environmental disaster. Enunciatory communities do not preexist, and they are not unchanging or internally coherent; they are not made up of members who share a common identity, but rather, they produce new identities.
• In a similar vein, Anna Tsing (2005) examines how collaboration creates new interests and identities through the kinds of local-­ global encounters that characterize environmental politics. Collaboration does not mean that participants are driven by common goals; indeed, they may not even understand each other’s agendas. Collaboration is not about consensus making but rather maintains friction at its heart.
• Drawing on these insights, I do not treat activist networks and corporate networks as ideologically antagonistic but emphasize the shifting alliances among various actors, and the ways in which they work both with and against corporate interests. I examine how the ambiguous and contradictory relationships between communities and mining companies sometimes produce unintended collaborations, but without negating the tensions, divergent interests, and incommensurable views that lie at their core.
• 7 – The chapters that follow examine the collectives of people and things that animate particular controversies over resource extraction, and the ways in which the effects of modern mining came to matter politically as mining activity emerged as one of the most hotly debated issues in Peru. I aim to open up the concept of “conflict” in ways that reveal the entangled relationships between people, places, and things that these controversies encompass.
• 12 – What I am proposing is an analysis that gets beyond commonsense understandings of the “conflicts” as a failure of state and corporate accountability. I am not suggesting that companies should forego public consultation, environmental audits, and other ways of demonstrating their accountability to the public and the state. Certainly, these mechanisms are necessary, and calls for more measures of accountability have led to some changes in the mining industry in response to public pressure.
• 20-21 – As mining technologies transformed, severed, or realigned relationships between people and the landscape, “the environment” emerged as an increasingly contested terrain of political action. By treating the environment as a political terrain, I build on foundational work in political ecology (see, for example, Bunker 1985; Peluso 1992; Peet and Watts 1996; Bryant and Bailey 1997), which seeks to combine political economy with a concern for the environment, including the unequal relations of power that characterize environmental conflicts and shape the emergence of social movements.
• 21 – Extending the field of political ecology, scholars have produced critical studies of landscapes that consider its material and agentive qualities (e.g., Kosek 2006; Cruikshank 2005; Raffles 2002). Others have suggested that resource conflicts are not only conflicts over the production of knowledge, but are also ontological conflicts over the making (or destruction) of worlds (Escobar 2008; de la Cadena 2010; Blaser 2009). I draw inspiration from these bodies of literature to examine how things like pollution take form and become tangible, when they matter, and for whom they become politically significant. These questions move us away from the idea of nature as a commodity or fixed external reality by considering the continuous process through which a substance comes into being, and its potential to reconfigure political terrains.
• Matters of concern challenge the idea of an incontestable, monolithic Nature that scientists must learn to speak for. Instead, Latour’s commitment to ontological multiplicity suggests that not only are there many cultures (multiculturalism) that produce different representations of a unitary Nature, but a multiplicity of actors and agencies that enact socionatural worlds.
• 23 – The technocratic management of the conflicts includes a focus on mechanisms of accountability aimed at promoting transparency, environmental management, and participation. Such initiatives can take the form of community dialogue, participatory environmental monitoring, and other initiatives under the rubric of “Corporate Social Responsibility.”
• Efforts to resolve the conflicts through these mechanisms of accountability rely on the knowledge of experts, who are called on to evaluate and monitor the practices of mining corporations. Increased transparency is often presented as a solution to the conflicts, but making corporate performance explicit can have the effect of making other things invisible
• What I want to draw attention to is that which remains outside of the frames of visibility: those elements that are not overtly part of political discussions about mining but nonetheless contribute to and perpetuate the controversies around it. To get at these undercurrents I use the concept of equivalence as an analytical tool to examine, on the one hand, how solutions to the conflicts are conceptualized, and on the other, the underlying tensions that remain beneath the surface.
• 25 – My own use of equivalence, by contrast, is not restricted to markets and exchange. In my conception, equivalences involve processes of negotiation that can help elucidate the dynamics of contemporary conflicts, precisely because what is being negotiated often falls outside the logic of the market and rational calculation.
• By emphasizing the cultural and social structural factors that give value to things, these studies point to questions that are also fundamental to the conflicts I address in this book. How do people assign value to things deemed to be incommensurable? How are things made comparable?
• Drawing on these insights, I want to explore how attempts to make and dispute equivalences create new social relations of collaboration and antagonism. More specifically, I want to examine what counts as equivalence in the calculation and evaluation of the effects of mining activity. To do so, I focus on the knowledge practices and mechanisms of comparison that make equivalences possible (or lead to their rejection).

CHAPTER 1 – TOXIC LEGACIES, NASCENT ACTIVISM

• 37 – Pollution in La Oroya came to matter (socially, economically, politically, and materially) through historically specific practices. These practices include corporate programs that monitored the health of workers and focused on controlling risks in the workplace; scientific studies that began to measure toxicity beyond the smelter and its effects on the population at large; and local and international environmental advocacy. These various forms of knowledge made pollution at times perceptible and at others invisible, in ways that both encouraged and restricted political action.
• 50 – But at the same time, the company faced a different reality than the smelter’s previous owners: the health and environmental problems had gained significant attention outside of La Oroya. Pollution in La Oroya was no longer treated as a local problem, but as an issue that affected the surrounding valley, the Mantaro River watershed, and the surrounding region.
  • The environmental consequences geographically extended beyond the extent of the direct economic benefit, i.e. due to environmental contamination, people were being harmed by the smelter who weren’t employed by it