A ‘cartography of concern’: Place-making practices and gender in the artisanal mining sector in Africa

Gendering women’s livelihoods in artisanal and small-scale mining: an introduction

“…In this issue, we use the term "artisanal and small-scale mining" (ASM) to refer to a form of mining that generally uses minimal technology, requires large amounts of physically demanding, even dangerous labour, and is routinely undertaken at the margins of formal economies and formal legal sanction. ASM has been historically ignored or disparaged by policymakers, even local communities, media and researchers, as a form of mining (for discussion, see Huggins, Buss, and Rutherford 2017). Current approaches to formal regulation of ASM have tended to favour licences and similar requirements that distinguish "artisanal" from "small-scale" mining in terms of allowable technology, ore yields and sometimes permissible areas for mining.…”

“…De Boeck 1998;Walsh 2003;Cuvelier 2017;Lahiri-Dutt 2013), and just as the invocations of "women" (and the need to protect them, for example) are easily hinged to particular policy interventions, the same is true for the materialization of male bodies. Precisely because ASM has been historically vilified by policymakers among others (see Huggins, Buss, and Rutherford 2017), the discursive rendering of male and female mining bodies always needs to be examined carefully.…”

The Moral Politics of Gendered Labour in Artisanal Mining in Sierra Leone

“…On the one hand, many politicians, policy actors and activists have catalogued varied harms it is said to produce to, among others, the industrial mining companies, the state, the environment, family structures, and community and individual health. On the other hand, many other scholars have detailed how ASM should be valued and supported as an economic livelihood for many within marginalized communities and have argued it has been unfairly criminalized by those promoting the former position who portray this economic activity via ‘numerous negatives’ (Hilson and Gatsinzi, 2014; see also Huggins et al., 2017).…”

Artisanal Gold Mining and Farming: Livelihood Linkages and Labour Dynamics after Land Reforms in Zimbabwe

“…The upsurge of ASGM across sub-Saharan Africa involving a wide variety of 'labour intensive activities without mechanisation' (Weng et al, 2015) has led to wide-ranging debates about the ways in which poverty-driven gold mining fitsor remains invisiblewithin academic discourses on rural livelihoods and development Huggins, Buss, & Rutherford, 2017;Mutemeri, Walker, Coulson, & Watson, 2016). Hilson, Hilson, Maconachie, McQuilken, and Goumandakoye (2017) argue that a general failure of policy-makers as well as researchers to engage closely with the concerns of ASGM-dependent communities has led to a severe lack of state support measures for regulating ASGM and a poor understanding of small-scale mining/smallholder farming linkages in Africa.…”