‘Free prior and informed consent’, social complexity and the mining industry: Establishing a knowledge base

׳Free prior and informed consent׳ (FPIC) has emerged as an influential theme in contemporary debates about mining and development. This paper considers the social knowledge base required to actualize the notion of FPIC in particular mining contexts. FPIC introduces heightened social performance requirements at a time where many mining companies are still grappling with the fundamentals of their corporate social responsibilities (CSR). The authors critically review the character of the current FPIC debate as it relates to mining, and outline four conditional factors required to safeguard against social risk. They posit that such risk could be exacerbated by mining companies that fail to comprehensively account for social context and conditionalities. Given the industry׳s broad-based discursive engagement with FPIC, there is an urgent need to extend the current debate beyond legal application and engage with other, equally important, base concepts from the social sciences for the operationalization of FPIC.