Abstract
This chapter examines local community experiences, understandings and changes attending the presence of mining activity, in particular as occurred in the Shire of Ravensthorpe in the South West of Western Australia (WA). It does so by drawing on an extensive ethnographic study spanning the development, opening, and closure of BHP Billiton’s Ravensthorpe Nickel Operation (RNO). Given that the negative consequences of mining activity are most evident and complex at the local level, it is crucial that we understand and address how communities (and the individuals and families who are both part of and are shaped by communities) experience the impacts of mining. Though difficult to measure, social and cultural dimensions of mining at the local scale, as this chapter demonstrates, are central to our understanding of mining as a curse or cure.
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Notes
- 1.
While this chapter presents the Shire of Ravensthorpe as consisting of four discrete and unified place-based communities, it is important to keep in mind that many local communities may simultaneously exist in one location. The idea of community as neatly contained by place is more an analytical device than a reality (Massey 2005). For further discussion of the way that mining industry corporate social responsibility practices tend to construct and privilege place-based communities see Mayes et al. (in press).
- 2.
This is a reference to personal protective equipment (PPE) worn by mine employees in Australia and which includes fluorescent orange safety vests. Similarly, reversing mine vehicles ‘beep’ as a safety mechanism.
- 3.
There were, of course, other more evocative descriptions of this division.
- 4.
According to its website, the MCA is a national industry body representing 48 companies, which together account for 85 % of mineral production in Australia and which include the two largest transnational mining corporations, BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto.
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Acknowledgements
The author thanks all those who participated in the research undertaken in the Shire of Ravensthorpe. A substantial component of the fieldwork was undertaken as part of the Alcoa Foundation’s Conservation and Sustainability Program hosted at Curtin University by the Alcoa Research Centre for Stronger Communities.
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Mayes, R. (2014). Mining and (Sustainable) Local Communities: Transforming Ravensthorpe, Western Australia. In: Brueckner, M., Durey, A., Mayes, R., Pforr, C. (eds) Resource Curse or Cure ?. CSR, Sustainability, Ethics & Governance. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-53873-5_15
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