| Sumario: | In 2007 in northern Chile, an Atacamanian community and a multinational copper mining company renewed a ten-year deal relating to the company's use of territory and the impact of their extraction of subterranean water resources. Atacamanian dealings with the mining company are informed by their experience of an already remote or absent state, a history alongside the mining industry, and global neoliberal discourse on the benefits of 'partnerships' made under the banner of corporate social responsibility. The moral values embedded in the notion of 'socio' both serve and constrain a relationship that on the surface seems to be characterized by the hegemony of neoliberalism, but local narratives of self-reliance and historical patronage reveal deeper roots and ambiguities. This ethnographic examination of community-company engagement elicits a critique of the conditions of being 'socios' and frames it in terms of contested understandings of the morality of social and economic relationships.
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