Mining Frontier Research Articles

Making Concessions: Extractive Enclaves, Entangled Capitalism and Regulative Pluralism at the Gold Mining Frontier in Burkina Faso

Summary This paper studies the regulation of concessions in the global gold mining rush. The liberalization of the gold mining sector has given way to complex forms of regulation where non-state and illegal mining entrepreneurs compete in governing mining extraction. Taking the case of gold mining in Burkina Faso, this paper analyses the conditions and dynamics under which such complex regulation takes place. We draw on extensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Northern Burkina Faso, in particular the Burkinabe mining sector. We argue that enclave economies in the gold mining sector are co-produced by state and market regulation through a “plurification” of regulatory authority. This “plurification” is the effect of competition among different frontier entrepreneurs, who seek to broker regulatory authority in mining concession sites. We show that concession sites are not discrete extractive enclaves, but are better understood as indiscrete sites that are entangled in local politics and social relations. Rather than thinning social relations, as is often claimed, we observe that enclave economies thicken politics around concessionary regimes, where governmental bodies re-emerge as an arbitrating regulatory force. These findings problematize policy prescriptions to formalize the gold mining sector and draw attention to the role of the state in re/producing frontier entrepreneurs with unequal political rights to claiming concessions.

Minería, resistencia y represión en Honduras: entre la ley y la impunidad

Esta artículo, basado en una investigación etnográfica de 6 meses entre mayo y noviembre del 2013, analiza la conflictividad social causada por la expansión de la frontera minera en Honduras: el movimiento antiminero logra movilizar a las comunidades rurales para declarar sus municipios libre de minería; mientras tanto, la industria minera puede circunvenir el derecho legal a la consulta a través de la criminalización de protesta y el uso de violencia. Este artículo plantea serias preocupaciones sobre esta tendencia e indica que los movimientos sociales son capaces de adaptarse y desarrollar resistencias exitosas en ambientes políticamente y jurídicamente complejos.

The ‘will to improve’ at the mining frontier: Neo-extractivism, development and governmentality in the Ecuadorian Amazon

Over the last decades, many progressive Latin American regimes have repoliticized natural resource extraction and forged an ‘extractive imperative’. In this article, I critically engage with the governmental discourses on the relation between mining and development that have become a preeminent feature of this extractive imperative. Through an in-depth case-study of the unfolding conflict around the Mirador copper mine in the Ecuadorian Amazon, I focus on how these discourses and their materializations function as governmentality projects that enable the expansion of mining – ‘in the name of development’ – despite burgeoning territorial conflicts. The analysis shows that the subjectivities of the inhabitants of surrounding communities changed along new ideas of development and the nation. This produced appropriate ways of thinking and acting in relation to the mining project and the territorial conflicts around it. Yet, the simultaneous emergence of alternative development subjectivities and counter-conducts shows that governmentality projects are not totalizing and often produce unintended effects. The findings suggests that a governmentality approach to power relations opens up fruitful directions for inquiry into the extractive imperative and its intricate effects at the mining frontier.

Voluntary resettlement in land grab contexts: examining consent on the Ecuadorian oil frontier

ABSTRACTForced resettlement, central to state-led development throughout the twentieth century, still paves the way for agroindustrial, hydroelectric, urban, and other forms of development in much of the global South today. In response to pressures from social movements challenging human displacement, states, firms, and multinational institutions increasingly seek the consent of impacted communities, often offering monetary compensation and resettlement, along with development assistance. Some states obtain consent by offering resettlements with urban infrastructures and public services. In Ecuador, the state has planned 200 urban-like resettlements called “Millennium Cities” for communities on the Amazonian oil and mining frontiers. Although resettlement in this context transforms human–environment relations and generates new social ills by isolating residents from food supplies and market networks, many communities do consent to resettlement. In this paper, I call attention to voluntary rural–urban resettlement in land grab governance and I explore why communities might consent to their own displacement. This paper suggests the need to account for the material and social conditions that structure consent.

Terr(it)or(ies) of Peace? The Congolese Mining Frontier and the Fight Against “Conflict Minerals”

This article traces the geography of the “conflict minerals” campaign and its impact on artisanal mining in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, a region that currently emerges as a pioneer case of traceability and due diligence efforts with regard to the exploitation and trade in tantalum, tungsten and tin. We subsequently analyse the opening and attempted closure of the Congolese resource frontier in the context of recent market reform, and we describe how this process has accompanied a transnational corporate–government nexus bent on monopolising Congo's artisanal 3 T resources. Specifically, we argue how the conflict minerals campaign and its implementation “on the ground” has brought about a harmful, disruptive logic for an artisanal mining sector that is notoriously categorised as unruly, illegal, and informal, but of which upstream stakeholders have in practice been jeopardised by transnational reform. We thus shift the attention from questions on the political economy of “resource wars” towards a deeper understanding of the intersecting spaces of production and regulation that underpin formalisation and traceability of “conflict minerals” in this protracted conflict environment. Resume Cet article retrace la geographie de la campagne contre les «minerais de conflit» et son impact sur l'exploitation miniere artisanale a l'est de la Republique Democratique du Congo (RDC), une region qui emerge actuellement comme un cas pionnier d'efforts de tracabilite et de diligence raisonnable a l'egard de l'exploitation et du commerce de tantale, tungstene et etain (3 T). Nous analysons l'ouverture et la fermeture tentative de cette «frontiere de ressources» en RDC dans le contexte de cette intervention recente, et nous decrivons comment ce processus accompagne l'emergence d'un assemblage transnational qui soutient une monopolisation progressive des ressources artisanales 3 T. Precisement, nous analysons la facon dont la campagne contre les «minerais de conflit» et sa mise en œuvre «sur terrain» a provoque une logique nefaste et disruptive pour un secteur d'exploitation miniere artisanale qui est notoirement juge indiscipline, illegal et informel, mais dont les parties prenantes en amont de la chaine d'approvisionnement ont ete largement mis en peril. Nous deplacons ainsi l'attention sur l'economie politique des «guerres de ressources» en portant l'analyse vers une comprehension plus profonde des espaces d'intersection entre production et regulation qui proposent la formalisation et tracabilite des minerais comme solution aux problemes plus larges lies aux conflits armes.

Artisanal frontier mining of gold in Africa: Labour transformation in Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo

Artisanal frontier mining of gold in Africa: Labour transformation in Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of Congo

Prospecting for dinosaurs on the mining frontier: The value of information in America's Gilded Age.

How much is a dinosaur worth? This essay offers an account of the way vertebrate fossils were priced in late 19th-century America to explore the process by which monetary values are established in science. Examining a long and drawn-out negotiation over the sale of an unusually rich dinosaur quarry in Wyoming, I argue that, on their own, abstract market principles did not suffice to mediate between supply and demand. Rather, people haggling over the price of dinosaur bones looked to social norms from the mineral industry for cues on how to value these rare and unusual objects, adopting a set of negotiation tactics that exploited asymmetries in the distribution of scarce information to secure the better end of the deal. On the mining frontier in America's Gilded Age, dinosaurs were thus valued in much the same way as any other scarce natural resource one could dig out of the ground, including gold, silver, and coal.

Food Politics of Alliance in a California Frontier Chinatown

Archaeological investigation of Mono Mills (1880–1917), a pluralistic community in California’s mining frontier, is beginning to reveal how immigrants mobilized or mitigated power inequalities through identity expression, community cohesion, and labor relations. Archival records, coupled with the archaeology of household foodways in the Chinatown neighborhood, reveal how social inequalities, labor organization, and identities reflect the impacts of racialization and strategies of resistance. Multicultural objects and aspects of cuisine were intimately entangled in the practices of laborers’ daily lives. The research highlights impacts of late nineteenth-century legislation to discriminate against Chinese immigrants, the agency of marginalized groups, and the long-term effects of discrimination.

The Politics of Frontier Mining: Local Chieftains, Chinese Miners, and Upland Society in the Nông Văn Vân Uprising in the Sino-Vietnamese Border Area, 1833–1835

This article, part of a longer study of the history of mining in Vietnam, argues that the Nông Văn Vân uprising (1833–1835) in the northern uplands of Vietnam brings into relief the importance of mining in the Vietnamese economy of the nineteenth century. It also highlights the consequences of Emperor Minh Mệnh’s dual agenda of extracting more tax revenues from mining operations and expanding the reach of the state by replacing hereditary tribal chieftains with imperial bureaucrats. While the uprising was quelled, the imperial agenda could not be fully realized in the face of local opposition and declining revenue from mining. The uprising reflected the multiethnic nature of border society, composed as it was of Vietnamese, local minority populations, and a significant number of Chinese mine owners, workers, and providers of goods and services to the mining towns. In ordinary times, the border was regularly flouted as kinship relations, trading networks, and ethnic affinity transcended allegiance to either the Qing or the Nguyễn in this borderland. Although the uprising was formally contained within the Vietnamese territory, rebels were able to seek refuge and recruit new adherents in China. And while the Nguyễn court was eventually able to subdue the rebels, its centralizing policies and attempts at extracting more revenues from mining were ultimately unsuccessful in the face of reemerging local and transborder forces.

West African ‘Stone Boys’ in the Ibadan Mining Frontiers Since the 1990s

In the last two decades of the 20th century, the city of Ibadan, capital of Oyo state, Nigeria hosted migrant entrepreneurs, “stone boys “from the West African sub-region who were actively involved in the export of gemstones. This paper drew on fieldwork to explicate how culture of migration, prevalent among West Africans, intertwined with entrepreneurship in the international gemstones trade and its implications on the Nigerian economy. It argued that gemstones trade among West African migrants was an inherited commercial heritage. It further advanced that lack of government investment in the non-oil solid mineral sector provided leeway for artisanal miners and unregulated export of gemstones; and social solidarity and identity empowered the migrants to dominate the export of gemstones

Extractive Desires: The Moral Control of Female Sexuality at Colombia's Gold Mining Frontier

Extractive Desires: The Moral Control of Female Sexuality at Colombia's Gold Mining Frontier

Mining Junior, Major Political Risks

Within the discipline of international business, institution-based theories on strategic management concentrate on how foreign firms conform to their local operating environment. One of the leading theories extending from such research is the idea that a foreign firm’s success in a given country rests on the firm’s ability to “bridge” the institutional (or structural) distance between the firm’s home country and host country, whether that distance be cultural, regulatory, political, cognitive or any given number of possible structural measures. The greater the gap between home and host country, proponents of institutional distance claim, the more challenging it will be for the firm to be successful in the host environment. In this article, we develop the concept of institutional distance through a single qualitative case study of a junior mining firm, Frontier Mining, initially headquartered in the United States and listed on the London Stock Exchange, but with the vast majority of its operations located in Kazakhstan. We approach Frontier and the concept of institutional distance less through the lens of international business and more through the interdisciplinary lens typical of regional studies: how Frontier conforms to the local Kazakh environment is equally telling for those interested in strategic management as it is for those concerned with the intersection of the international political economy and the domestic political economy of a post-Soviet state in transition.

Thirsty for gold! Slaking the diggings from California to Bendigo

Nineteenth century gold rushes in California and Australia spurred a frenzied scramble to secure ample year‐round supplies of water for gold washing and for sustaining life in primitive frontier mining settlements teeming with diggers struck with “gold fever.”

Eldorado!: the archaeology of gold mining in the far North

List of illustrations Acknowledgments and contributors by Catherine Holder Spude Part I. Rediscovering Eldorado: an introduction to this volume by Catherine Holder Spude and Robin O. Mills 1. An Overview History of the Alaska-Yukon Gold Rushes, 1880-1918 by Robert L. Spude 2. Theoretical Perspectives on the Frontier Mining Pattern by Donald L. Hardesty 3. A Proposed Model for a Placer Gold Mining Settlement System by Robin O. Mills 4. Predicting Social and Economic Function at Residential and Commercial Site Types in the Far North, 1880-1920 by Catherine Holder Spude 5. New Perspectives from the North: Comparative Opportunities and Challenges in an Archaeology of Eldorado by Margaret Purser Part II. Intermediate Coastal Transfer and Supply Settlements: Supplying the Upper Yukon through Skagway and Dyea by Robin O. Mills and Catherine Holder Spude 6. Already Here and Rich: A Brief Ethnohistory of Upper Lynn Canal by Thomas F. Thornton 7. Tobacco Pipes, Medicinals, and Decorated Dishes: The Archaeology of Gender and Economic Class in Households from Skagway, Alaska by Doreen C. Cooper and Catherine Holder Spude 8. Faunal Remains in Skagway, Alaska: Gold Rush to Working Class by David R. Huelsbeck Part III. Getting around the Landscape: Links in the Interior Transportation System by Robin O. Mills and Catherine Holder Spude 9. An Overview of Chilkoot Trail Archaeology by Eve Griffin and Karl Gurcke 10. Canyon City: The Archaeology of a Company Town on the Transportation Network to the Klondike by T. J. Hammer Part IV. Central and Secondary Distribution Settlements: Supplying the Mining Districts by Robin O. Mills and Catherine Holder Spude 11. Explaining Variability in Northern Gold Mining Saloons by Catherine Holder Spude, Robert M. Weaver, and Tim A. Kardatzke 12. Living at the Edge of a Boomtown: Transient Life in Dawson City during the Klondike Gold Rush by Michael Brand 13. Boom through Bust and Beyond: Changing Settlement System Functions at Coldfoot, a Placer Mining Town in Alaska by Robin O. Mills 14. Alder Smoke and Shoe Nails: Life in an Early-20th Century Mining Camp by Howard L. Smith, Robin O. Mills, and Catherine Holder Spude Part V. Extracting the Wealth: Sites on the Gold Creeks by Robin O. Mills and Catherine Holder Spude 15. Living the Solitary Life: Placer Mining Camps in Alaska, 1900-1950 by Becky M. Saleeby 16. Alaska Natives in the Gold Rush: A Look at Valdez Creek in the Early to Mid-20th Century by Robert E. King 17. Cabin Comforts: The Archaeology of Bachelor Cabins on Fish Creek, Alaska by Andrew S. Higgs and Robert A. Sattler References Cited Index

The global uranium rush and its Africa frontier. Effects, reactions and social movements in Namibia

Uranium mines are the often forgotten source of nuclear power. This article studies impacts and social movements at a uranium mining frontier looking at the interaction between the global social metabolism, industrial dynamics and local ecologies of resistance. Namibia, the world's fourth largest producer of uranium, stands at the vanguard of the global uranium rush with 66 granted prospecting licenses and two operating mines. We focus on three generic attributes that help to explain the emergence and intensity of resistance by local communities to uranium mining: the ecology and geography of the resource; the degree and type of political and economic marginalisation of the community; and crucially, the connection and integration of local concerns with broader social movements and political demands. We show with the use of empirical material how these factors play out differently in five Namibian communities that have been, or stand to be, affected by uranium mining, and explain how local ecologies of resistance shape, or fail to shape, the global uranium rush. Our work offers an example of an integrative approach for the analysis of the global–local dynamics of environmental change in relation to the extraction and flow of the essential materials that fuel industrial economies.

Birth of a market town in Tanzania: towards narrative studies of urban Africa

Sub-Saharan Africa's social science literature has primarily focused on phenomena within the rural village context. Urban analysis is currently gaining momentum with concentration on the continent's capital cities, and in particular the mega cities of Lagos, Kinshasa and Johannesburg. Urban settlements of more modest size and political importance have received scant attention. This article explores the urban growth dynamics of Katoro, a rapidly expanding small town in Tanzania's northwest mining frontier. Tracing Katoro's early origins and its growth as a regional trading centre with respect to design, natural resource utilization and service development, it is argued that the transition from rural to urban settlement is far from accidental. The practical concerns and cosmopolitan vision of the settlement's leading early settlers set Katoro on a trajectory of demographic expansion and economic growth through successive stages of Tanzanian socialist and neo-liberalist policies. Responding to the opportunities afforded by regional gold mining and international border trade, longstanding residents and recent migrants created a thriving centre for the provision of trade and services that had “boom” characteristics distinct from gold strike settlements in the surrounding area. Katoro's success must be seen in scalar terms, and raises issues about analytical biases in African urban studies. Current literature dramatizing the unpredictability and chaos of urban life in Africa's mega cities has taken centre stage, leaving the dynamics of smaller urban settlements, foundational to the future of urban Africa largely ignored. This article seeks to address the literature's scalar imbalance and draw attention to the meso level between individual livelihood activities and macro economic urban performance.

‘Oh those long months without a word from home’, Migrant letters from mining frontiers

Recent economic woes in Ireland mean many are once again emigrating in search of jobs. Emigration can be an emotional event for the emigrant, and those they leave behind. However, this generation will experience emigration differently to any previous generation. The advent of the internet and webcam services means that there are no longer any communication delays between emigrants and their friends and family because of vast geographical distances. It is easy to forget how recent these changes have been. In 1873 Michael Flanaghan an emigrant in California, wrote to his family home in Ireland marvelling at a photograph of his brother; ‘It is a most useful art this photographing by which one can send from one end of the world to the other a pretty correct representation without writing a word about it’ (M. Flanaghan, 5 July 1873, Flanaghan family letters, Miller Collection, University of Missouri). Our own technological ...

"This lofty mountain of silver could conquer the whole world": Potosí and the political ecology of underdevelopment, 1545-1800

By the 1570's, Potosí, and its silver, had become the hub of a commodity revolution that reorganized Peru's peoples and landscapes to serve capital and empire. This was a decisive moment in the world ecological revolution of the long seventeenth century. Primitive accumulation in Peru was particularly successful: the mita's spatial program enabled the colonial state to marshal a huge supply of low-cost and tractable labor in the midst of sustained demographic contraction. The relatively centralized character of Peru's mining frontier facilitated imperial control in a way the more dispersed silver frontiers of New Spain did not. Historical capitalism has sustained itself on the basis of exploiting, and thereby undermining, a vast web of socio-ecological relations. As may be observed in colonial Peru, the commodity frontier strategy effected both the destruction and creation of premodern socio-ecological arrangements.

Miners' magic: artisanal mining, the albino fetish and murder in Tanzania

ABSTRACTA series of murders of albinos in Tanzania's north-west mining frontier has been shrouded in a discourse of primitivism by the international and national press, sidestepping the significance of the contextual circumstances of an artisanal mining boom firmly embedded in a global commodity chain and local profit maximisation. The murders are connected to gold and diamond miners' efforts to secure lucky charms for finding minerals and protection against danger while mining. Through the concept of fetish creation, this article interrogates the agency of those involved in the murders: the miners who purchase the albino charms, thewagangahealers renowned for their healing, divination and sorcery skills who prescribe and sell the charms, and the albino murder victims. The agrarian background, miners' ambitions and a clash of values comprise our starting point for understanding the victimisation of albinos.

Insider Stories of the Comstock Lode and Nevada’s Mining Frontier, 1859–1909: Primary Sources in American Social History

Insider Stories of the Comstock Lode and Nevada’s Mining Frontier, 1859–1909: Primary Sources in American Social History