Mineral Extraction as Ecological Practice 2022

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In the second seminar of Sydney Environment Institute's Occasional Talks Series, sociologist and SEI's 2023 Environmental Humanities Visiting Fellow Sebastián Ureta, explores how the waste produced from mining interacts with human and non-human ecologies.

The Anthropocene has arrived riding a wave of pollution. From 'forever chemicals' to oceanic garbage patches, human-made chemical compounds are seemingly everywhere. Concerned about how these compounds disrupt multiple lives and ecologies, environmental scholars, activists and affected communities have sought to curb the causes of pollution, focusing especially on the extractive industries.

In this talk, Sebastián Ureta will draw on his recently published book with Patricio Flores, Worlds of Gray and Green, to challenge us to rethink extraction as ecological practice. Adopting an environmental humanities analytic lens, this book offers a rich ethnographic exploration of the waste produced by Chile's El Teniente, the world's largest underground mine. Deposited in a massive dam, the waste - known as tailings - engages with human and non-human entities in multiple ways through a process the authors call geosymbiosis. Some of these geosymbioses result in toxicity and damage, while others become the basis of lively novel ecologies. A particular kind of power emerges in the process, one that is radically indifferent to human beings but that affects them in many ways. Learning to live with geosymbioses offers a tentative path forward amid ongoing environmental devastation.

Speakers

• Associate Professor Sebastián Ureta, Universidad Alberto Hurtado

• Dr Sophie Chao (Chair), University of Sydney

• Professor Susan Park (Chair), University of Sydney

• Associate Professor Thom van Dooren (Chair), University of Sydney

This event is part of the Sydney Environment Institute's Occasional Talks Series, which provides a space for a diverse range of international speakers to share their ideas about pressing environmental challenges. This event brings together SEI's research theme Biocultural Diversities and research project Unsettling Resources.