The future lies beneath: Mineral science, resource-making, and the (de)differentiation of the Peruvian underground

Abstract

Engaging with recent scholarship on the relations among science, resources, and territory, this paper examines the role of late-nineteenth-century mineral science in the rendering of the Peruvian underground as a knowable and actionable space. I focus on the mineralogical work of Italian-born naturalist Antonio Raimondi, identifying in it a dual dynamic of geo-political differentiation and ontological dedifferentiation. On the one hand, Raimondi constructs Peruvian national territory as distinct due to the abundance and diversity of minerals contained in its subsurface. On the other, his mineralogy was undergirded by the idea that Peru's minerals were ontologically equivalent to minerals anywhere else, and thus knowable through ‘universal’ scientific knowledge practices. Both aspects of Raimondi's mineral science reflected an underlying aim: stimulating the ‘rebirth’ of Peruvian mining. Yet, I suggest that the influence of Raimondi's mineralogical work on the history of resource-making in Peru lay not in its immediate utility for political-economic calculation, but rather in its contribution to an imaginary of Peru as mineral-rich and underexploited. In conclusion, I call attention to the need for research on the political economies of Earth science to approach science as an historically and geographically situated practice, to attend to the multiple (e.g., calculative and symbolic) dimensions of scientific activities, and to be attentive to ways in which the logics and aims of Earth science may not fully intersect with those of capital and the state.