Stuart Kirsch

This project examines interactions among mining companies, indigenous movements, and nongovernmental organizations. Relations between corporations and critics have intensified given the neoliberal consensus in which civil society assumes many of the regulatory responsibilities of the state. The project is based on long-term ethnographic research and advocacy with the people living downstream from the Ok Tedi mine in Papua New Guinea and extensive collaboration with NGOs working on mining and environmental issues. It adopts a comparative perspective in examining the rise of indigenous politics, the use of international courts to adjudicate disputes, debates concerning expertise and advocacy, manipulation of scientific research, corporate responses to critique, and new strategies of protest.