Temporal enclosures and the social production of inescapable futures for coal mining in Colombia

Abstract

The creation of spatial enclosures is a well-developed subject in the study of extractive industries. Less attention has been given to the control of time and the future within these socio-spatial contexts. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, we followed two controversial projects aimed at expanding the biggest open-pit coal mine in Colombia, both of which implied diverting watercourses to extract coal from beneath their riverbed. We describe corporate strategies that give rise to what we call temporal enclosures, the process by which mining companies aim to restrict imaginable outcomes to those that favour them, producing the sense of a manageable and inescapable future in which forthcoming activities are presented as both inevitable and desirable. The temporal enclosure is configured discursively in practices of building engineered landscapes, refashioning relations between the mine and the people, and intensifying the language and practices of nurturing and caring for humans and non-humans around the operation area. However, in the context of increasing pressure regarding the consequences of extractive industries, the dispute over alternative futures becomes a highly relevant political site. We argue that this temporal dimension is interlinked with spatial, political, and economic dynamics around extractive industries and that understanding how temporal enclosures are produced and resisted is essential for envisioning sustainable alternatives.