Fighting for the Future: From Societalisation to Politicisation of Chile’s Dominga Mining Project

Abstract

This article examines the Dominga mining project in Chile as a paradigmatic case of how large-scale industrial projects can escalate from technical disputes into societal crises of moral significance, becoming vehicles for political struggle. Dominga, a proposed iron ore and port megaproject in La Higuera, Coquimbo, has generated over two decades of public controversy. Promising investment and jobs while threatening severe environmental damage, particularly to the Humboldt Penguin Reserve, it became a focal point of conflict involving successive administrations, the judiciary, local communities and the media. Elaborating on Jeffrey Alexander’s theory of societalisation, whereby domain-specific controversies escalate into societal moral crises, we analyse 1086 press articles published between 2011 and 2024 to trace how Dominga was societalised and politicised. We focus on the role of cultural devices – codes, narratives and temporalities – in shaping this process. Our media analysis identifies three stages of cultural battles surrounding Dominga: (1) competing visions of development (2010–2017); (2) disputes over environmental institutions (2017–2021); and (3) politicisation through presidential corruption scandals (2021–2024). Each stage mobilised symbolic codes (growth versus conservation, legality versus illegitimacy), narratives of blame and responsibility, and shifting temporal framings that emphasised long-term environmental futures, contested institutional presents or decisive political moments. We argue that, more than a sequence of isolated contestations, a larger cultural grammar embodies Dominga’s disputes, becoming an iconic cultural battle over Chile’s economic model. By projecting contested futures, industrial megaprojects become culturally charged artefacts and resources for political struggle. This case expands on Alexander’s framework in two ways. First, it examines the conditions under which societalised crises become politicised, transforming industrial disputes into instruments of political conflict. Second, it foregrounds the central role of temporalities: how past legacies, present institutional struggles and imagined futures interact, reshaping the temporal structure of public meaning and granting events diachronic significance.