EASA Anthropology of Mining workshop: “Digging into stereotypes: re-thinking mining representations and practices”

This workshop aims to ethnographically explore the production and effects of mining and miners’ representations in different geographical and historical contexts. It will focus on the ways in which stereotypes (and ideal-types) contribute to create the conditions for economic and political exclusion in mining areas.

By exploring the overlaps and discrepancies between dominant representations of mining (in popular, political or media discourses, and scientific literature) and miners’ actual practices and self-perceptions, contributions will examine the ways in which specific social images of mining are produced. These representations, in turn, produce social and material consequences, ranging from the marginalisation or stigmatisation of miners and mining communities, to the legitimation of new forms of global extraction as “local” or “traditional” practices.

This workshop will not only examine the discursive level of mining representations, but will also consider their material effects on mining as a practice. The aim is to provide new insights into the anthropology of mining and foster a critical understanding to support transformative interventions benefiting local mining communities involved in or affected by mining activities.

We invite ethnographically grounded papers and methodological reflection related but not limited to the following themes :

1. Ethnography of mine workers: practices, self-perceptions and social representations;
2. Cross-historical and geographical comparisons of mining imaginaries and practices;
3. Post-mining and labour as cultural heritage;
4. Narratives related to mining and miners in visual media and literature;
5. Artistic and art-activist creations and collaborations with mining communities;
6. Politics of institutional or hegemonic representations of mining;
7. New frontiers : representing space, arctic, deepsea mining.

If you are interested, please submit an abstract (250 words) and a short bio with relevant details (name, affiliation, email address) to : Anthropologymining@gmail.com by June 30th.

Limited funds are available for covering transport and/or accommodation of individual participants. Priority will be given to precarious and independent researchers.

Workshop organisers: Kyra Grieco (EHESS), Deana Jovanović (Utrecht University), Lorenzo D’Angelo (Sapienza University of Rome)

Partners: Sapienza University of Rome, Utrecht University, and EHESS.

Funded by: EASA.