Mining Encounters: Extractive Industries in an Overheated World - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0745338372 ISBN 13: 9780745338378

Publisher: Pluto Press, 2018

Synopsis

In a fast-changing world, where the extraction of natural resources is key to development, whilst also creating environmental and social disasters, understanding how landscapes, people and politics are shaped by extraction is crucial.

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.

About this title

About the Authors

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 (1962 – 2024) was Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo and former President of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA). He was among the most highly cited anthropologists of his generation, and his classic and accessible textbook Small Places, Large Issues remains a cornerstone in anthropology courses. His later books, including Overheating, tackled the important issue of climate change within the discipline.

Edition details

• Publisher: Pluto Press
• Publication date: 2018
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0745338372
• ISBN 13: 9780745338378
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 192
• Editor: Pijpers Robert Jan, Eriksen Thomas Hylland