Doctoraol Dissertation Research: Shade: Mining Investment, Mineral Rights, and Land Tenure

This comparative research on political ecology and legal geography of the subsoil examines the changing patterns of exchange, concentration and constitution of ownership of subsurface property rights in two ‘hot spots’ of new extractive activities: the Intag region of northwest Ecuador, believed to contain mineral ores, and the Marcellus and Utica shale formations in north central West Virginia (Acosta 2010; US Energy Information Administration 2013). The research focuses on the micro-politics of the new “global” geographies of extraction (Bebbington and Bury 2013) in two different sites of mining investment in the Americans, asking (i.) how the geographic patterns of subsoil ownership patterns are changing, and (ii.) how these changes are facilitated or impeded by institutional and governance practices. By fusing together theoretical insights from political ecology and legal geography, this research will examine the meaning of ownership and its consequences