ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the discourses surrounding contentious mining projects in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Canada. It explore, through a critical and multimodal lens, some of the ways in which industry actors attempt to legitimise fossil fuel expansion and how local opposition actors resist said expansion on their lands. Working with social struggles and engaging with political themes brings out intense positionings where people are encouraged to take one side or the other. Ethnographers are familiar with the comfort of acting as a participant observer, and negotiating their roles as insider/outsider. Positioning theory offers ethnography a detailed framework to make explicit this awareness that reflects the complexity of the ever-changing myriad of positionings in fieldwork. Additionally, it encourages the ethnographer to remember that she is in fact working with real people who have real lives outside of their role as "participants". It highlights how ethnography goes beyond observation of the other and recognizes that the ethnographer is also observed, categorized, and othered.
