Modern cadasters define mining scales according to production capacity (e.g. "small-scale mining") and technological sophistication (e.g. "artisanal mining"). However, in Latin America, categories also appear to follow identity-based criteria, such as "Black communities mining" in Colombia.  Through a comparative case study, my doctoral research examined why Black communities in Colombia successfully gained recognition for alternative mining categories, while Indigenous communities in Peru were effectively banned from mining on their traditional lands. My findings suggest that formalization instigates parallel yet reciprocal territorialization processes. While communities strive to repurpose the policy to advance their territorial projects, the process simultaneously extends state authority and the extractive frontier.

To unpack this complexity, I introduce mineral ecologies—a concept that captures community governance adaptations to the socioecological changes driven by successive extraction cycles. This lens highlights the centrality of new anthropogenic aquatic bodies (mining ponds resembling mangrove networks) in the Peruvian Southern Amazon and Pacific Lowlands of Chocó. I argue that communities use formalization to gain recognition for adaptive mining practices within these uncertain aquatic environments and to control the chaotic proliferation of mining on their lands. However, variation in policy outcome is explained by multi-scalar political settlements—particularly the interaction between international development discourses and the expansion of legal extractive frontier in areas claimed by ethnic collectives. This tension results in an erratic formalization implementation that limitedly aprehends ethnicity, justice, and aquatic fluctuations into cadastral systems.

Pathways to recognition hinge upon flexible and empathetic understanding of complex socio-ecological dynamics, as demonstrated by the Colombian case. In the absence of any path, indigenous miners will rely on informal governance mechanisms, which are often perceived as more reliable than unstable policy development.

A "follow the thing" approach inspired our multi-sited fieldwork to reconstruct gold trade circuits in Peru (Journal of Rural Studies, 2023)