Trading time and space: Grassroots negotiations in a Brazilian mining district

Abstract

Participatory governance has been used to direct public budget and policy priorities. Grassroots politics also offers democratic pathways for negotiations over permits for businesses such as mining. In this paper, I focus on notions of time in policy-meetings between a mining company, the affected community in the district of Miguel Burnier, Brazil, and mediators between them – members of a municipal council for cultural heritage. I used ethnographic data to investigate whether participatory councils could abridge temporalities and offer a compromise. While the company offered improvements in quality of life in an uncertain future and the council needed to preserve local cultural heritage, residents suffered from pressing problems in the present: depopulation, pollution, and unemployment. My findings show that participation could not solve residents’ socio-economic problems efficiently, for these same problems affected their ability to voice concerns and wait for compensations. Relaxing immediate economic pressures improves the process of participation.