This research employed a qualitative approach to the study of a mining conflict in two communities affected by a mine project in the Akyem area in the Birim North District in the Eastern Region of Ghana. The study applied an embedded case study approach to study the general impact of the activities of the Newmont Akyem mine project on the affected communities. However, from a comparative perspective, the study also explored how differently the mine's arrival impacted the two communities one of which was resettled away from the original village and another which did not relocate. In this context, the focus of the study was to examine the overarching question of why the social relationships between the affected communities of Yaayaso and Hweakwae and the mining company continue to be marred by conflict long after compensation payments for lost land and property have been paid. This question is explored by examining the discursive positioning and interpretive practices that are deployed by both the affected communities and the mining company in the conflict. Using a mix of qualitative data including, primarily in-depth one-on-one interviews and document and media analysis, this overarching question is examined through the frame of how discursive positioning practices and symbolic meaning making in the quotidian relationships between the affected communities and the company shaped the emergence and nurturing of conflict.

The argument is made that at the heart of the conflict are not just the tangible and intangible issues that are directly -- or even indirectly -- related to the impact of the activities of the mine but that the discourses and the interpretive meaning making processes that unfold in the articulation of these impacts are themselves critical drivers that significantly shape both the emergence and perpetuation of the conflict. In other words, how these issues are framed, contested, renegotiated, and reconstructed in the day-to-day subjective discursive practices by both the affected communities and the mine officials are integrally intertwined with how they position each other and themselves in discourses that gradually enter into the terrain of hostile relationships. The argument is made that paying attention to these discursive and interactionist undercurrents of conflict in both the research and practice in the field of conflict resolution is essential for a holistic understanding of social conflicts in mining contexts.

In the Newmont Akyem conflict, the hostile discourses which constituted the very locus of the conflict for the most part revolved around the themes of loss, distrust, disappointment, and betrayal in what was perceived to be an evolution of the mine's behavior in its relationship with the affected communities once they got the land that they wanted for the extraction of gold.

In the context of conflict transformation, there were several turning points including critical conversational turns in which the opportunities for an enduring engagement in the community-company relationship were missed. These opportunities occurred around both the tangible and intangible dimensions of the conflict such as the schism between the dominant anthropocentric worldview of nature and vs an indigenous animism of nature-man relationship; perception of the mine's gradual disengagement; lack of transparency and consent; cross-cultural learning; and power asymmetries in the triadic relationships between the mine, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the affected communities.

While acknowledging the multifaceted nature of the conflict and therefore requiring approaches to conflict resolution that are equally multi-pronged and holistic, the study proposes a modest recommendation as a starting point in the long process of helping the two parties improve their social relationships. This encompasses a dialogic approach to community-company relationships and policy changes at the structural level that target a retooling of the role of the EPA from both the human and economic capital perspectives.