“…y nos vamos a ir toditos para abajo”. Ontologías subterráneas en conflicto en Tierra Amarilla

Sebastian Ureta; Andrés Contreras

doi:10.22199/issn.0718-1043-2020-0055

Authors

Sebastian Ureta Universidad Alberto Hurtado https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3169-4992
Andrés Contreras Universidad Alberto Hurtado https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4739-6527

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22199/issn.0718-1043-2020-0055

Keywords:

mining, sinkholes, underground ontologies, equivocation, Chile

Abstract

On November 2013 a massive sinkhole appeared in a terrain near Tierra Amarilla, a small mining town in northern Chile. This event immediately raised the alarms of the local population, given the possible occurrence of new sinkholes directly in the inhabited area of the city. In order to deal with such fears, the local mining companies established a task force with representatives of the community, authorities and mining experts. At the center of this task force work was the difficult cohabitation between two contrasting ontologies about the local mining underground, one associating it with risks and ruination and the other with transparency and control. Using science and technology studies (STS) conceptual devices, on this paper the work done by this task force is analyzed as a process through which the first ontology was solely seen as an erroneous understanding of the second one, a “myth” emerging out the local population’s ignorance. Such framing end up producing a closure for the controversy that left untouched the neighbor’s original matters of concern, becoming more an example of a radical equivocation than a perfect application of corporate social responsibility, as it was presented afterwards.

Author Biographies

Sebastian Ureta, Universidad Alberto Hurtado

Profesor asociado del Departamento de Sociología de la Universidad Alberto Hurtado (Santiago, Chile). Desde un enfoque de los estudios de ciencia, tecnología y sociedad (CTS), desde 2012 viene desarrollando investigación etnográfica sobre la implementación de políticas ambientales sobre minería y suelos contaminados en Chile. Es autor de "Assembling Policy: Transantiago, Human Devices and the Dream of a World Class Society" (MIT Press, 2015) y, con Patricio Flores, "Residual Ecologies: Finding Life Within Extraction" (University of California Press, por aparecer).

Andrés Contreras, Universidad Alberto Hurtado

Sociólogo de la Universidad Alberto Hurtado. Actualmente trabaja como consultor independiente.

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