ENTREPRENEURSHIP CONTROL POLICIES AS REFRACTORY STRATEGIES: THE CASE OF THE MINING ESTABLISHMENT OF VELADERO IN ARGENTINA

Abstract

This article aims to be a contribution to a set of debates developed in social sciences, and in the anthropology of work in particular, related to the forms of control that are deployed in the work spaces. On this way, we will focus on the daily relationships that constitute, in our understanding, a kind of “stressed reproduction” of the relations of hegemony / subalternity.

For these purposes, we will present the case of the Veladero metal mining enterprise, exploited by the subsidiary company MAG SRL of the Barrick Gold and Shandong Gold corporations in the Andes mountains, northwest of the Province of San Juan, Argentina. In particular, we analyze what happens when the corporation decides to move the whole of a strategic work area hundreds of kilometres away from the site of the mining deposit. This change of the area called “Dispatch” responds to a readjustment of control strategies by the company that operates the Veladero mining deposit. As we analyzed in the article, the company realizes this readjustment to suture fissures that are produced from the daily practices of the workers that, in some way, attempt against their business objectives.