It Runs in the Blood: Towards an Epistemology of Extraction
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2023
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University of Hawaii at Manoa
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The lives of mining-affected residents of Naga City in Cebu, Philippines are characterized by stories of violence that have emerged with the onset of mining in their locality. The September 20, 2018 landslide has become emblematic of their contentious experiences with mining. Theirs are stories of dispossession and relocation to evacuation centers, deaths of their spouses, parents, siblings and neighbors, damages to their homes and livestock, and experiences of intimidation and harassment from mining companies and government actors. Yet, when the mining-affected residents brought these experiences to the court, they were faced with a new set of challenges which ultimately denied these experiences. This lawsuit ought to be framed as one that takes place in a country that is among the deadliest in the world for land defenders. Along with agribusiness, the mining sector ranks as the most dangerous and deadly. Scholarship on mining in the Philippines primarily centers three areas of focus; mining as an Indigenous struggle, a leftist struggle centered around land reform, and mining as a neoliberal or policy-centered issue. However, research on the particularities of mining in Cebu tends to be limited to historical accounts of mining during Cebu’s colonial period or the geospatial aspects of the recent 2018 landslide in Naga City. Mining contention in Cebu occurs outside the context of leftist rebellion and Indigenous resistance against the state and corporate actors. The thesis is anchored in Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ epistemicide, which problematizes cognitive injustices that, in broad terms, shape daily life and state-institutions in context of a historical struggle between the Global North and South. Acknowledging Santos’ scholarship on epistemicide, this thesis conceptualizes dimensions of epistemological violence to articulate an epistemology of violence particular to the extraction of natural resources. Focusing on the civil case in Naga City, three dimensions of epistemological violence make apparent how an epistemological framework for scholarship particular to the extraction of natural resources can be conceived. The three types of epistemological violence are; (1) erasing lived experiences, (2) legal categories as fixed boundaries, and (3) manipulating courts. Drawing on ethnographic work conducted in Naga City in 2019 and 2022, including conversations with mining-affected residents and the analysis of legal documents of this civil case, this thesis conceptualizes a framework to study the rule of law as a site where epistemological violence characterizes mining-related contention.
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Mines and mineral resources
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Philippines--Naga City
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