International workshop
University of Cagliari – 21-22 November 2019
Deadline for abstract: 10th September 2019
Over the last decades the acceleration of extractive processes intensified the rhythm of
transformation of mining regions worldwide, producing highly diversified and yet
intimately interconnected socio-ecological geographies of labour and exploitation,
ecological distress and dereliction, as well as moral economies, political ecologies and
cultural imaginaries. Areas formerly interested by small and large-scale mining have been
gradually abandoned – at times recovered for new economic ventures, other times left in
ruin – while the constantly mobile frontiers of extraction have opened new green-fields
across the world. From a global perspective, mining and post-mining can be thought as
interrelated processes at different scales: bound up by the political economy of global
capitalism; concomitant outcomes of transnational financial and corporate strategies; or
the uneven outcomes of the changing configurations of contemporary energy politics.
The aim of the workshop is to bring together anthropological perspectives and
ethnographic studies on mining and post-mining across a broad range of geographical
contexts. Focusing on the materiality of mining and post-mining sites, we invite
contributions that help build a comparative outlook on the uneven trajectories and
articulations of mining and post-mining in a global perspective.
We propose the ‘global life of mines’ as an overall framework for exploring links,
interconnections and scales of articulations between the current booming of extractive
industries, projects, and operations worldwide – along with the new rhetorics of
sustainability, ‘green’ and ‘blue’ economy etc.. – and the diversified consequences of
mine closures, ranging from abandonment and dereliction to new extractive processes
(heritage-making, ‘green’ economies etc).
We invite contributions that address the following issues:
How mining and post-mining activities and projects are historically connected and/or
disconnected within an ideal ‘global life cycle’ of mines? How such connections and/or
disconnections can be ethnographically investigated?
How mining and post-mining can be jointly examined across the multiple scales of
contemporary energy politics? And how they are being reconfigured in the current ecological crisis, through emerging patterns of ‘green’ extractivism and discourses on energy transition and sustainability?
How the notion of ‘strategic resource’ is interpreted, negotiated, and used at the local
level (e.g. miners, communities, institutions) and how does it provide a meaningful
framework for linking mining and post-mining practices?
In what way do capitalist relations prejudice the heritagization of post-mining sites, as in
Europe and North America, compared to other world regions such as Latin America?
Finally, how mining and post-mining can be fruitfully brought together in a comparative
framework, which can help think the global dimension of diversified forms of extractivism
and post-extractivism, in different contexts, sites, and (post)mining locations?
Please submit abstract proposals (max 200 words), along with a short bio (100 words), to
zerilli@unica.it and ampusceddu@gmail.com. Accepted participants will be notified by
September 15th.
The organization will provide accommodation for all participants. For
any queries and further information please contact:
Filippo M. Zerilli (University of Cagliari): zerilli@unica.it
Antonio Maria Pusceddu (CRIA-IUL): ampusceddu@gmail.com