Positionality and ethics

We are now living in the ‘mineral age’ where the global economy, and our daily lives, are thoroughly entwined with the exploitation of natural resources. Making sense of these resource encounters and relations requires novel ways of researching extractive processes, and methods capable of engaging diverse sets of actors and interests across contested terrains. In this chapter we summarise some of the positions occupied by anthropologists in resource arenas and place them in the wider context of the changing field of resource extraction – recognising that new positions are continually emerging, these positions can overlap and that many anthropologists move between them over the course of their career as they investigate extractive effects. We consider the implications that different positions create for methodology and knowledge, and review the ethical dilemmas and future directions for an anthropology of extraction.