Mining Town Research Articles

The Narrative Strategy of the Poverty Alleviation Drama Mining Town

The Narrative Strategy of the Poverty Alleviation Drama Mining Town

인류세 시기 세계유산의 자연-문화 연계 통합보존관리를 위한 장소 중심 접근법의 필요성

The nature-culture dichotomy inherent in the World Heritage Convention seemed to be overcome but incomplete when cultural landscapes were introduced as a new type of World Heritage in 1992. In recent years, IUCN and ICCROM, the World Heritage advisory bodies, are actively promoting an integrated nature-culture management approach through ‘Connecting Practice’, ‘Nature-Culture Journey’, World Heritage Capacity Building Program, and ‘Panorama Solution’. The integrated nature-culture management approach encompasses the wider environment, culture and local community surrounding the heritage site, which is equivalent to a place-centered approach. The extension of the world heritage, Røros Mining Town and the Circumference, not only contributes to recognizing and preserving the entanglement and coexistence of nature and culture, but also provides an opportunity to recognize another humanity, Sámi and their sustainable way of managing nature in the Antropocene era.

A more perfect dissolution

Abstract Samuel D. Hunter’s 2019 play Greater Clements is named after a fictional former mining town in Northern Idaho, which straddles the space between presence and absence. The locals have decided to put an end to a dispute with the Californian second-homers that have flocked to town in recent years, by voting to unincorporate. Hunter has indicated that the play relies heavily on the “toxicity of nostalgia”, on which the present essay concentrates. This article explores nostalgia as connected to two marginalised communities in Greater Clements: the miners, now out of work due to the effects of deindustrialisation, and the town’s Japanese American residents, who are still reeling from the trauma of wartime internment.

Social cost of mining-related lead (Pb) pollution in Kabwe, Zambia, and potential remediation measures

Lead (Pb) pollution has been one of the major environmental problems of worldwide significance. It is a latent factor for several fatal illnesses, whereas the exposure to lead in early childhood causes a lifetime IQ loss. The social cost is the concept to aggregate various adverse effects in a single monetary unit, which is useful in describing the pollution problem and provides foundation for the design of interventions. However, the assessment of the social cost is scarce for developing countries. In this study, we focus on the lead pollution problem of a former mining town, Kabwe, Zambia, where mining wastes abandoned near residential areas has caused a critical pollution problem. We first investigated the social cost of lead pollution that future generations born in 2025–2049 would incur in their lifetime. As the channels of the social cost, we considered the lost income from the IQ loss and the lost lives from lead-related mortality. The results showed that the social cost would amount to 224–593 million USD (discounted to the present value). Our results can be considered conservative, lower bound estimates because we focused only on well-identified effects of lead, but the social cost was still substantial. Then we examined several engineering remediation measures. The results showed that the social cost can be reduced (the benefits of remediations) more than the costs of implementing remediation measures. This study is the first to investigate the social cost of mining-related lead pollution problem in developing countries. Our interdisciplinary approach utilises the micro-level economic, health and pollution data and integrates the techniques in economics, toxicology and engineering.

Hoping for state policy and “policy-based resistance”: contested representations of a good society in a Chinese mining town

Following the resurgence of anthropological interest in resistance studies, I show how resistance can be based on firm adherence to government policies, and can thus ideologically strengthen the state. Though it is common for anthropologists to conceptualize policies as political technologies of control, Chinese scholars have shown that policies can also be appropriated by citizens for purposes of resistance. These different views on policies imply a dichotomy between the state and society. However, drawing on ethnographic data on the resistance experiences of peasants and workers in a Chinese mining town (Pingan), I explore how Pingan people’s imagination of state policy implicates a “state-family” relationship in which “policy-based resistance” was bounded by a political-moral nexus. Pingan peasants and workers used state policies as a tool of resistance despite the policy restrictions placed on social life. They did not see state policies as offering opportunities of resistance but also saw them as resources for hoping the central state’s policies would bring them a happy family life. I illustrate this with three case studies in which Pingan people’s spatial imaginations of state policies connect to the notion of “family” (家). This article concludes by reflecting on the concept of “refusal,” arguing that those who employed policy-based resistance refused to acknowledge the local government as effective policy enforcer but accepted the central state as a benevolent policy-maker, offering them hope and allowing them to imagine a good society.

‘We just like it here’: Identity and community in a Wisconsin former mining town

‘We just like it here’: Identity and community in a Wisconsin former mining town

The making and re-making of high modernist towns in the Circumpolar North

In this article we explore the fate of high modernist architecture and settlement planning in the North, through the lens of mining towns in Sweden and Quebec. After WW2, cities across the world were subject to a wave of restructuring in accordance with high modernist ideals. The circumpolar north became the subject of some of the most radical examples, often described as utopian. In the Swedish Arctic, a renowned architect Ralph Erskine played a leading role. He combined functionalist principles, with ideas of creating settlements protecting inhabitants from harsh Arctic conditions, in harmony with the environment. Erskine's ideas were implemented to a different extent in Kiruna and Svappavaara in north Sweden in the 1960's and in Fermont, Quebec, in the early 1970's. Our aim is to understand the challenges of creating industrial settlements in the Arctic, with the capacity to attract employees that are needed for resource extraction and other industries. While Erskine's architecture in Svappavaara and Kiruna will be demolished, the wall shaped town in Fermont is still intact and expanding. By comparing and highlighting differences, we call attention to the threat of demolition of legacies of an era that has yet to be defined as cultural heritage.

Changing Times

Changing Times

Narco‐spectrality: Narco‐aesthetics and hauntings in the short filmPánico en Pánuco

AbstractThis article uses text and film to demonstrate how the affective and sensory dimensions of narco‐power in contemporary Mexico haunt the familiar. As a case study, I draw on footage documenting my family's trip to Sinaloa to visit my father's birthplace in the rural mining town of Pánuco. Through an analysis of the ghosts produced by the filmmaking process and the disruptions to our travels by an increasingly tangible threat of narco‐violence, this article explores how fear and distrust reshape a pastoral aesthetics of family leisure. Film is adept at exploring sensory, affective, and embodied aspects of everyday experience. Here it is used to evoke unfolding tensions among my family members, underlining the ways narco‐terror manifests atmospherically and as an embodied experience. Film and text here narrate a subjective experience of narco‐power and make the case for the ways a spectral narco‐aesthetics, or narco‐spectrality, permeate the familiar.

How California’s Ghost Towns Recount Gold Rush History?

The “ghost towns” of California present the history of the gold rush and offer places for popular historic experience. These once run-down and abandoned towns are newly celebrated as tourists’ destination. This paper analyzes how these ghost towns recapture history and memory, as well as eliminate or distort certain aspects of the old west.BRBodie, the gold mining town flourished between 1876 and 1910s, was designated as the State Gold Rush Ghost Town. It endeavored to keep the status of the town as it was, did not build or add anything more. The keepers of Bodie claimed that they conserved the real west of the past in “arrested decay”. However, the ideal old west they preserved could be seen as modeled after the images from popular media.BRThe State Silver Rush Ghost Town Calico, on the other hand, made the ghost town as a fun town. Walter Knott, who had romanticized the old west and the mining era, created both a fake Calico in his Knott’s Berry Farm and the real Calico, the ghost town. This silver mining town once bustled, now welcoming visitors with different kinds of entertainment, such as plays and mining experiences.BRBoth Bodie and Calico explain the mining era as an adventurous and heroic time of the white settlers, while eliminating the ordeal of the Chinese laborers and the Native Americans. The California State Railroad Museum’s “Chinese Railroad Workers’ Experience” exhibition shows that a partnership between academia and public history could improve historical representation of the era.

Human exposure to mercury in the atmosphere and soils in Konongo: an age-old mining centre in the Ashanti Region of Ghana.

The dramatic upsurge of artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) activities in Ghana has resulted in environmental degradation, water pollution and human exposure to mercury-the main hazardous element used in gold extraction. This study evaluated the degree of human exposure to mercury based on the concentrations found in the air and soil samples taken at a resolution of 1 km2 across Konongo, a historic mining town in Ghana's Ashanti Region. The highest atmospheric mercury concentration was 193ng/m3, which is much higher than the levels the European Union and Japan allowed, which are 10ng/m3 and 40ng/m3, respectively. The concentration in the soil was 3.6mg Hg/kg, which is around ten times higher than the background concentration in nature. Additionally, the soil concentrations were higher above the worrisome levels of soil contamination in agricultural land (4mg/kg) and industrial areas (16mg/kg), respectively. Soils are extremely contaminated with mercury at sites artisanal mining activities take place. The concentrations of mercury in the air and soils were significantly higher (p < 0.5) at locations of prominent mining activities compared to areas not close to mining sites. The inhabitants of the Konongo community are therefore exposed to mercury, most likely emitted from artisanal mining activities. A non-carcinogenic risk is posed to the people by inhaling mercury vapour through the air and vapourisation from the soil. Children are exposed to a higher risk than adults as they receive higher daily doses of mercury than adults.

Doing ‘Dirt Research’ in Northern Mining Towns: An Overview

Doing ‘Dirt Research’ in Northern Mining Towns: An Overview

Michael 'Mick' McGahey: Miner, communist and trade union leader

Michael McGahey was born in the Lanarkshire mining town of Shotts in 1925, a year before the general strike and miners' lockout. He died in 1999, the year that the Scottish Parliament, which he was credited with playing a leading role in bringing about, was established. McGahey had come to public prominence in the preceding decades as President of the National Union of Mineworkers Scottish Area (NUMSA) and a public face of British miners' industrial action in the 1970s and 1980s. This paper is based on trade union and archival records, as well as oral testimonies recorded with close comrades of McGahey, including his son, senior Scottish Communists and NUMSA officials. It firstly assesses the foundation of McGahey's worldview in the context of class struggle, personal and familial hardship and entering the mining industry as a young man. The second section overviews McGahey's evolution from a colliery activist to a national trade union leader, underlining his willingness to build pragmatic broad left alliances between Labour and Communist affiliated miners. Section three explores the the connection between McGahey's commitment to Communism and his support for a Scottish Parliament within the United Kingdom.

Uncovering a 70-year-old permafrost degradation induced disaster in the Arctic, the 1952 Niiortuut landslide-tsunami in central West Greenland

On December 15th 1952, at approximately 14:00 local time a mass of 5.9 × 106 m3 of permafrozen talus deposits failed in a landslide close to the Niiortuut mountain on the south coast of the Nuussuaq peninsula, central West Greenland. Between 1.8 and 4.5 × 106 m3 of the material entered the sea and generated a tsunami that propagated through the Vaigat strait (Sullorsuaq). Here we describe this catastrophic event for the first time by analysis of historical material supplemented by recent fieldwork and discuss the implications for the state of contemporary permafrozen slopes. The tsunami killed a fisherman working on the shore of southern Nuussuaq, 10 km south-east of the landslide. In the mining town of Qullissat, 30 km south of the landslide, it had a runup height of 2.2–2.7 m and caused minor material damage. Morphological evidence show that the basal surface of rupture was 80 m inside the permafrost cemented talus slope, whose degradation was a dynamic conditioning factor for the landslide. The 1952 Niiortuut landslide is the first historically recorded event of permafrost degradation induced landslide-tsunamis in the Arctic. We infer that the landslide and its cascading consequences occurred due to the early-twentieth century warming that started in the late 1910's in the Arctic. Warming is now increasingly affecting this region, as shown by an enhanced recent landslide activity.

Arctic science diplomacy of Norway: A case study of svalbard

Svalbard has undergone a major transformation since 1960s upon the Norwegian government's shifting focus from mining town into scientific activities. While the Spitsbergen Treaty provides a common ground for international scientific collaboration, the installation of satellite ground station by European Space Research Organization (ESRO) in Ny-Ålesund, Svalbard Satellite Station in Longyearbyen, and research activities propelled by Norwegian Polar Institute (NPI) has transformed Svalbard into one of the most prominent Arctic science diplomacy cases. Owing to its unique location and easy access opportunities for researchers, research facilities and substantial infrastructures well connected to international networks, professional and social research environment assuring safety routines and regulations as well as an assisting research strategy, the region is currently perceived as an international hub for Arctic research. On the other hand, Svalbard is expected to undergo further structural changes due to its international and transient population. This article aims to outline the Arctic science diplomacy of Norway based on the Svalbard case. Accordingly, the evolution of scientific communities in Svalbard is examined from a science diplomacy perspective. The future implications of structural changes within these communities are also discussed in the conclusion part.

Mine closure, women, and crime in Matjhabeng, South Africa

AbstractResearch from the Global North suggests that crime increases during a mining boom but not during mining decline. Our evidence from the South African gold mining town of Matjhabeng (formerly Welkom) shows that crime increases during mining decline and affects women in particular. We use social disruption theory to explain women’s experiences of crime and also their involvement in it. We find that criminal activities harm women in particular, that crime has become entrenched within female‐headed households, and that women are conflicted in their roles as parents and become participants in crime and beneficiaries of criminal activities. It is a matter for concern that research generally ignores the sociospatial nature of mine closure and its effects on women.

Reenactment as Social Action: The Making of Encierro

On 30 July 1984, 11 mercury miners locked down in the mines of Almadén (Ciudad Real, southern Spain) to protest against their precarious economic and social conditions. 650 meters deep inside the oldest and most productive mercury mines in world’s history, the miners endured the dark and contaminated galleries for 11 days and nights until their claims were addressed. As an emigrated local filmmaker, I come back to post-industrial Almadén in 2019 with the idea of making a documentary reenactment film about the mining strike. The premise is to find young locals willing to live inside the now-closed mines for 11 whole days to homage the old miners and recreate the experience of 1984, 35 years later. Apart from engaging our collective mining past, performing the form and duration of a previous workers strike, Encierro proposes the underground as a living and symbolic space to foster a series of conversations, encounters, and social and political propositions to reimagine Almadén, which rose from a mine shaft more than 2000 years ago, as ‘something else besides’ a mining town. This article explores the potential of documentary film shooting to take on a different relationship to normal life than the same or similar events would have as “untransformed reality” (Goffman, 1974, p. 175) - a strike versus the reenactment of a strike – and its potential for activism and social transformation. I will also explore the use of the conditional tense in documentary; a speculative and hypothetical approach to reality sensitive to the ‘potentially’ real, the ‘possible’, and the ‘what if’ as modes of documentation. What happens when the forms of ‘documentary’ and ‘reenactment’ are exceeded, and act upon the world rather than only represent it?

“A Revolution in Labor”: African Americans and Hybrid Labor Activism in Illinois during the Early Jim Crow Era

“A Revolution in Labor”: African Americans and Hybrid Labor Activism in Illinois during the Early Jim Crow Era

American Zion: Cliven Bundy, God and Public Lands in the West

American Zion, according to historian Betsy Gaines Quammen in her recent book of that title, is both a place and an idea central to understanding the Bundy family, their brand of ideology, and the actions they took at Bunkerville and the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge less than a decade ago. Quammen's account of the historical, religious, and intellectual contexts in which the Bundys operate is clearly and accessibly written for a general audience unfamiliar with the interior American West and its diverse array of public lands.Produced by Torrey House Press, a publisher known for works that unapologetically promote environmental activism, American Zion takes seriously the thoughts and rationale of the Bundys but does not hesitate to condemn their actions. Quammen's book sits alongside a growing body of work on the Bundys and public lands by the likes of journalists and scholars such as Peter Walker, Michael J. Makley, James Pogue, Christopher Ketcham, John Temple, Anthony McCann, James R. Skillen, Jacqueline Keeler, and John L. Smith.Quammen's contribution is positioning the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its members (Latter-day Saints or Mormons) at the center of the story. Outside of the region the western writer Wallace Stegner called Mormon Country, it is difficult for Americans to imagine how important Latter-day Saints, their church, and their faith have been to the development to the interior American West. Mormon settlers built irrigation structures, developed ranching operations, and populated mining towns with permanent residents in the geography between the Sierra Nevada and Rocky Mountains, the Columbia Plateau, and the Mojave Desert. Quammen, as well as the LDS church itself, readily recognizes that settlement directly displaced and dispossessed Indigenous peoples, but her focus is on the mindset of those settlers. The Mormons of the past brought with them into Zion, the place where they believed God had granted them a homeland, a grudge against the federal government, a stubborn endurance despite constant persecution by mainstream Americans, a belief in the dominion of humans over nature as evidenced by irrigation projects and ranch operations, and a gun-toting militancy born of self-preservation. These are the tenants of faith, according to Quammen, to which the Bundys and others like them adhere.Mainstream Latter-day Saint doctrine today exhibits few of these early characteristics, and Quammen does an admirable job parsing the differences between past and present. But her emphasis on the continuum of belief between early Mormon leaders and the church's deeply conservative faction, represented by Ezra Taft Benson and Cleon Skousen, tie these leaders to other Christian fundamentalists. Catholic Paul Weyrich and Southern Baptists Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, along with Benson and Skousen, adhered to the same tenants: that God is an active participant in the lives of individuals who often undergo faith-promoting experiences; the Constitution is divinely inspired but few truly understand its power; evil is actively at work in the world, and the federal government is held hostage by it; and the apocalyptic war against evil is coming and God's chosen must defend their faith, family, and freedom. Quammen takes these beliefs seriously and details how they manifested in the actions of people such as Cliven Bundy.For some readers, American Zion will not resonate. Those more familiar with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will likely chafe at the emphasis on the fringe aspects of the religion. However, Quammen does counterweight her examination of the deeply conservative elements with descriptions of other Latter-day Saints of influence, such as the historian Juanita Brooks whose history of the Mountain Meadows Massacre accurately laid responsibility at the feet of church leaders; Senator Reed Smoot, who co-sponsored the legislation that birthed the National Park Service and Zion National Park; and environmental writers such as Gina Colvin, Joanna Brooks, George Handley, and Terry Tempest Williams.Similarly, environmental historians of the American West will notice the absence of literature that would have provided greater nuance to her discussion of multiple use on public lands, the development of recreational tourism, and the consequences of working landscapes intersecting with recreational ones in the rural West. Notably missing are Hal K. Rothman's Devil's Bargains (1998), Art Gomez's Quest for the Golden Circle (2000), Evelyn Schlatter's Aryan Cowboys (2006), Joseph Taylor's Persistent Callings (2019), and my own The Size of the Risk: Histories of Multiple Use in the Great Basin (2015).However, Quammen did not write American Zion for those already familiar with the history of Mormonism and the American West. Her audience is outside Utah and outside this region, and the book's utility is in helping those unfamiliar with this place and its past see beyond the caricatures.

Productivity and profitability: Investigating the economic impact of gold mining mechanisation in Kamituga, DR Congo

In South Kivu Province of the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, the use of new technologies in artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) has proliferated over the course of the last decade. Based on a case study of ASGM mechanisation in the major mining town of Kamituga, we investigate the economic impact of this process on the productivity of ASGM and the profitability of its operations. Drawing on a wide range of qualitative and quantitative data, we challenge the common perception of ASGM as traditional, conservative, and unproductive. We demonstrate that on the contrary, ASGM operators in Kamituga make use of sophisticated and productive machinery in their quest to profit from their activities. With the recent emergence of ball mills and other forms of mining technology, gold production in Kamituga now carries a distinctly 'small-scale' character.