Rural Ventures: Mineral Exploration and Economic Life

Efforts to regulate expert communications within venture capital markets have been studied for their effects on prospective investors, but not for their impacts on individuals living near the sites where market activities originate. This research addresses this gap by examining how relationships between mining industry experts and rural residents take shape around speculative projects during periods of market collapse.

Throughout North America, new corporate outreach strategies and environmental risk assessment regulations have caused mining companies to engage with rural communities ever further in advance of actual mining activity. This research examines the social consequences of these shifts in the context of a recent “boom” and subsequent “bust” affecting several towns and Indigenous reservations.

In 2011, a spectacular rise and fall in global market prices for rare earth elements drew half a dozen small companies to the region to conduct geological analysis and local promotion campaigns. While none of the prospects identified became producing mines, exploration experts have continued to visit the region to encourage residents to sustain their hopes that new mines will eventually be constructed.

This research will generate new insights into how residents of rural communities come to participate in globalizing knowledge economies by examining how local conversations about mineral exploration, venture finance, and regional economic uncertainty increasingly highlight the individual agency and mobility.

This project contributes to analyses of the roles that experts and expert knowledge play in shaping contemporary rural life by examining how resident-expert relationships take shape around promised projects that may never be realized. The project addresses two main questions: (1) How do new forms of financial and other technical information shape how rural residents understand the “failure” of exploratory projects and their potential for future renewal? (2) How have venture capitalism and the financialization of resource development planning altered conversations about regional futures and economic life?

Data come from interviews and observations of everyday life during prolonged lulls in exploration activity. Analysis will focus on how references to exploratory projects emerge in residents’ encounters with political leaders, geologists, and financial experts as each group speculates about delays and discusses other potential futures for regional landscapes.

Building on ethnographic engagements with Indigenous corporations and governance groups working to re-shape resource economies, the project also examines how Indigenous groups with diverse political and economic ambitions are working to frame these deferrals alongside longstanding sovereignty goals and other collective prerogatives. Overall, the project explains how venture market-focused regulatory processes have changed the ways experts active in rural areas understand the ethical demands of their work, and how these processes affect residents’ sense of their own futures amid profound economic and ecological changes.

This project is jointly funded by Science and Technology Studies and Cultural Anthroplogy in the Directorate for Social, Behavioral and Economics.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.