Placing resources: Junior mining companies and the locus of mineral potential

Abstract

Ideas of resource becoming have become prominent across scholarship in resource geography over the past two decades. In this article, I link processes of becoming with those of place. Drawing on research focused on copper exploration and the junior mining sector, I describe the way resource potential is articulated through three distinct practices of placing: the placing of resource prospects within narratives of copper deficits; the placing of resource prospects in space; and the placing of resource prospects in juxtaposition to other projects. These promotional, taken-for-granted practices within the junior mining industry not only underscore the way resource potential is tied to spatial and temporal narratives, but illustrate how the locus of resource potential is found in areas beyond the underground.