“Seven years of setback in life!”: social technologies for managing crisis and criticism in the Samarco disaster

Abstract

Since the collapse of the Fundão dam in November 2015 in the municipality of Mariana, mediation has been determined by state agencies in alliance with the mining companies as the quickest way to resolve conflicts. Grounded on the discourse of the occurrence of an “accident”, the construction of what would be “rough justice” was established by these agents as the “best” way of dealing with the “exceptionality” of the situation. Thus, in order to repair the damage, acting on the fine line of constitutional law and out-of-court settlements, crisis management and political technologies adopted to control the victims and activist’s criticism were applied to the case. Based on a reading of technical and legal documents, as well as fieldwork, the aim of this article is to provide a reflection on the social management technologies adopted in the Samarco disaster.

Keywords:
Mining; Disaster; Mediation; Management; Rough Justice