The Rio Doce Mining Disaster in Brazil: between policies of reparation and the politics of affectations

Abstract

This article analyses the policies of affectations in the context of the disaster which occurred in late 2015, when an iron ore tailings dam ruptured, affecting thousands of families in the Rio Doce River Valley, in the southeast of Brazil. The paper discusses the challenges faced by victims of the disaster, given that the ‘affected person’ as a social subject goes through a dramatic process of forced sociability, forged in political processes and bureaucratic demands which are alien to her/his world. As a consequence, the claims of victims are transmuted by the rationalities and techniques of corporate management, therefore disabled and re-codified by taxonomies which define forms of damage reparations, as well as modes of reconstruction of their way of life. From an anthropological perspective, we examine the struggle between the objectification imposed by the policy of affectation and the political subjectivation of actors compulsorily brought to contentious settings over the control of their own destiny.

Keywords

• mining
• disaster
• conflict
• affected person