Black Sand and the Red Court: Scalar Politics of a Mining Conflict in the Philippines
Publisher: Annals of the American Association of Geographers
Author(s): Joshua Wayland
Date: 2019
Topics: Conflict Causes, Extractive Resources, Governance, Livelihoods
Countries: Philippines
This article presents a case study of a dispute over magnetite mining in the Municipality of Gonzaga in the Philippines that culminated in the assassination of the town’s mayor by the New People’s Army (NPA) insurgency. Drawing on the analysis of qualitative data compiled from key informant interviews, survey responses, and document review, it examines the deployment of scalar politics by local politicians, antimining activists, and the NPA during the conflict. Results suggest that failures of resource governance, in conjunction with grievances related to the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of mining, created opportunities for the NPA to forge alliances with local civilian networks and propagate its revolutionary narrative. The findings offer generalizable insights regarding the role of natural resources in shaping vulnerability to, risk of, and opportunity for armed conflict, as well as the mechanisms by which local conflicts can become entangled with broader patterns of civil violence. In particular, it is argued that the multiple overlapping scalar configurations that define extractive industry create unique opportunities for political actors to engage in “scale jumping” to challenge established power structures. Key Words: natural resources and civil conflict, political ecology, scale, scale jumping.