The 1AC’s extractivist epistemologies have material effects.

First, as we’ll see in the case-studies, extractivist projects tend to assume that values can be identified in an objective and universal way.Footnote2 Plural and competing conceptualizations of the value of an artifact or of a river or mountain challenge extractivist projects; thus it becomes necessary to dismiss alternative views from other parties. When museum curators are seen as stewards who protect universal values, it becomes easier to accept the claim that they are the final arbiters of the value of Native American artifacts. Archaeologists likewise are often presented as working with superior epistemic methods, such as objectivity, traditionally defined, so that their assessments outrank others. Tribal group claims are often labeled particularistic and subjective, neither objective nor universal, and thus defeasible (Wylie Citation2002). They may also be defined as “resistance to science” (Fine-Dare Citation2002, 167). The important point to understand is that the process by which a value is defined is an interpretive practice for all parties. Allowing plural approaches to the definition of value disrupts the hegemony of academically trained experts. Thus accepting pluralist approaches to value determination will involve accepting not only a pluralism of metaphysical commitments but also pluralist approaches to the knowledge processes that identify values subject to extraction.

Second, extractivist projects have an interest in defining the value that is extracted in a non-relational way. This is a way of externalizing costs, as capitalists put it. The cost of cleaning up what has been made toxic in the process of extraction, the cost of the effects of extraction on infrastructure, the cost of regenerating raw materials when that is possible, none of these need to be addressed when the value of what is extracted can be portrayed as distinct and non-relational (see, e.g. Wallerstein Citation2006, 57). Thus the assumption that values can be transported to a new domain without being diminished assumes a non-relational, decontextualized conceptualization of values as discrete and independent of their relations to adjacent entities. Resources that are separated from their original context are not assumed to lose value in the process of removal unless they deteriorate in some material way. Further, those values that may be destroyed (such as arable land or animal habitats) in the process of extracting other values (such as mineral resources) are not co-determining or co-constitutive but merely adjacent and do not need to be factored into the quantification of the value achieved in the extraction. The belief that the values that have been destroyed in the process of extraction can be fairly paid for in a one-time payment also makes assumptions that values can be measured quantitatively and transformed into monetized elements that can then be calculated as a fair exchange.

In some cases, a value may not diminish in the process of extraction. But values can be diminished when, for example, artifacts are removed from their surroundings in ways that compromise the interpretation of their meaning, or plants with medicinal properties are separated from local communal practices that may impact their efficacy. The problem is when we assume without analysis that a non-relational approach is adequate to assessing value. Rather, the relevance of context and relationality should be our initial assumption about the nature of value.

Thus far I have been discussing the metaphysical approach to the value of objects,Footnote3 but extractivists also assume that epistemic resources can be identified, extracted, and given a fair market value. The key feature of an extractivist epistemology, I argue, is the way in which it treats this epistemic resource as separable from its origin, without subsequent loss, rendering it into a commodity with exchange value over which exclusive rights can be contractually defined, protected, and enforced. To be commodified in this way, knowledge must be reduced to information or data without involving interpretation or analysis, thus ensuring an inevitable epistemic injustice (Fricker Citation2007). When we understand knowledge as always involving interpretation, it becomes more obvious that dialogic processes are necessary for good epistemic outcomes.

Extractivist epistemologies thus involve certain epistemic assumptions about justification procedures that follow from their assumptions about the nature of the epistemic resources they are pursuing. Like extractivist capitalism, extractivist epistemologies attempt to extract epistemic elements from their original surroundings and in this way from their political, ethical, and institutional context of articulation. This makes it possible for knowledge-seeking institutions or individuals to avoid being held accountable to the ethical, political, and economic demands of indigenous groups or other local communities whose resources are being extracted; a one-time payment is sufficient to cover all obligations.