Speculating on sovereignty: ‘money mining’ and corporate foreign policy at the extractive industry frontier

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the capacity that ‘technologies of the imagination’ have to suture routinized financial practices in the City of London to the opening up of new extractive industry ‘frontiers’. I focus on the political risk rankings through which host jurisdictions of speculative projects are assessed, and the selection of discount rates in the valuation of prospective mines. By treating these as technologies of the imagination–rather than calculative devices–the significance of the meaning created by mining professionals as they generate images of ‘politically risky’ territories or jurisdictions prone to ‘resource nationalism’ comes into view, along with a particular deployment of international investment law upon which speculative activity in the junior mining market depends.