Community mining consultations in Latin America (2002-2012): The contested emergence of a hybrid institution for participation

We claim that community consultations are being institutionalized in the context of mining conflicts in Latin America. Consultations are not isolated experiences but constitute a strategy diffused and transformed in the midst of multi-scalar social learning processes where social movements exchange strategies and discourses and a hybridising process occurs in relation to political and cultural local features. We sustain that community consultations are a hybrid institution where non-state and state actors and formal and informal institutions are mobilized. Consultations are a strategic tool of social movements and a contested emergent institution - as different state bodies support or reject their validity - that reclaim the right of affected populations and indigenous peoples to participate, in empowering forms, in high-stake decisions that affect their territories, livelihoods and future.