Title: Mining for Progress: Copper, Conflict, and Corporate Social Responsibility at Las Bambas, Peru
Author/Institution: Forrest Culp – PhD Dissertation, University of South Carolina Publication Year: 2022
Corporate Responsibility in a Landscape of Discontent
Forrest Culp’s doctoral research examines the paradox of corporate social responsibility (CSR) within one of Peru’s most contested mining sites—Las Bambas, operated by MMG Limited. He argues that despite massive investment in social programs and infrastructure, the company’s approach has failed to resolve deep-rooted mistrust among communities of the southern Andes. Culp situates the conflict within a broader political economy of extraction, where state decentralization, community fragmentation, and corporate paternalism converge. His analysis shows that CSR, while rhetorically inclusive, often reinforces unequal power relations, leaving local residents skeptical of both government and industry motives.
Ethnographic Approach and Ground-Level Dynamics
Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and document review between 2018 and 2021, Culp traces the evolution of relations between company officials, community leaders, and state representatives. He documents how participatory spaces—community assemblies, environmental hearings, grievance mechanisms—function more as arenas of negotiation than as vehicles of empowerment. His findings highlight how the redefinition of consultation after project transfer from Glencore Xstrata to MMG altered expectations and reignited tensions. Culp’s field data capture the human experience of industrial expansion: fluctuating hope, disillusionment, and the social fatigue of living under constant negotiation with extractive power.
Implications for Social License and Development Policy
Culp concludes that achieving a genuine social license to operate at Las Bambas requires shifting from transactional CSR to transformational governance grounded in reciprocity and accountability. His research calls for institutional reforms that strengthen community autonomy, guarantee transparent environmental oversight, and align local development agendas with regional and national policy. By documenting how global mining capital meets local political realities, the dissertation reframes Las Bambas as a case of resource governance failure and renewal—a microcosm of how modern extractivism tests the boundaries between progress and legitimacy in Latin America’s mineral heartlands.