Mining Encounters
Extractive Industries in an Overheated World
Looking at resource extraction in numerous locations at different stages of development, including North, West and South Africa, India, Kazakhstan and Australia, a broad picture is created, covering coal, natural-gas, gold and cement mining, from corporate to 'artisanal' extraction, from the large to the small scale. The chapters answer the questions: What is ideological about resource extraction? How does extraction transform the physical landscape? And how does the extractive process determine which stakeholders become dominant or marginalised?
Contributing to policy debates, Mining Encounters uncovers the tensions, negotiations and disparities between different actors in the extractive industries, including exploiters and those who benefit or are impoverished by resource exploitation.
Robert Jan Pijpers holds a PhD in Social Anthropology from the University of Oslo. His research focuses on the micro-politics of (large-scale) mining in West Africa. He is co-coordinator of both the AEGIS Collaborative Research Group 'Resource Extraction in Africa' and the EASA 'Anthropology of Mining' Network. He is the editor of Mining Encounters: Extractive Industries in an Overheated World (Pluto, 2018).
Thomas Hylland Eriksen is Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and former President of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA). He is the author of numerous classics of anthropology, including Small Places, Large Issues, Ethnicity and Nationalism and What is Anthropology?
List of Figures and Maps
Preface
1. Introduction: Negotiating the Multiple Edges of Mining Encounters - Robert Jan Pijpers and Thomas Hylland Eriksen
2. From Allegiance to Connection: Structural Injustice, Scholarly Norms and the Anthropological Ethics of Mining Encounters - Alex Golub
3. The ‘Shooting Fields of Porgera Joint Venture’: An Exploration of Corporate Power, Reputational Dynamics and Indigenous Agency - Catherine Coumans
4. Rubbish at the Border: A Minefield of Conservation Politics at the Lawa River, Suriname/French Guiana - Sabine Luning and Marjo de Theije
5. Territories of Contestation: Negotiating Mining Concessions in Sierra Leone - Robert Jan Pijpers
6. Drilling Down Comparatively: Resource Histories, Subterranean Unconventional Gas and Diverging Social Responses in Two Australian Regions - Kim de Rijke
7. Coal Trafficking: Reworking National Energy Security via Coal Transport at the North Karanpura Coalfields, India - Patrik Oskarsson and Nikas Kindo
8. Diamonds and Plural Temporalities: Articulating Encounters in the Mines of Sierra Leone -Lorenzo D’Angelo
9. Risky Encounters: The Ritual Prevention of Accidents in the Coal Mines of Kazakhstan - Eeva Kesküla
Notes on Contributors
Index
eBook ISBN: 9781786803764
135mm x 215mm