View article

Conflicts over extractive projects often hinge on questions about which and whose knowledge counts, and whose realities and knowledges are ignored in decision-making. This has led scholars to scrutinize ‘corporate science’ and the ways in which mining corporations produce forms of ignorance through the deliberate distortion and manipulation of knowledge on the socio-environmental impacts of mining. In this article, I examine these dynamics through a case study of the expansion of mining in the Ecuadorian Amazon, with a focus on the role of corporate cartography and counter-mapping. Based on an analysis of the ‘lines of becoming’ of various maps and ethnographic engagements with map-makers, I argue that our inquiry into corporate science and ignorance should go beyond the notion of ‘ignorance as strategy’. To fully understand the production of ignorance in the extractive industries, we should look …