Hidden tunnels, drowned dragons, and other subterranean secrets: Environmental politics of small-scale mining in Colombia

Jonkman, Jesse

doi:10.1016/j.jrurstud.2022.09.038

Cited by 2 publications

(1 citation statement)

References 38 publications

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“…Nonetheless, these vertical dimensions of the nation and identity are multifaceted. Oguz (2023: 412), for instance, suggests that “ uncertainties about what was under the ground were further linked to contemporary anxieties and desires of territorial belonging and geopolitics in Turkey.” Geographers and political ecologists examining so-called artisanal and small-scale mining, or the subsequent mining of exhausted mines, have demonstrated how these evince dynamic and historically specific understandings of the underground which push against the conceptual binaries of extractivism versus anti-extractivism (Benites, 2023; Jonkman, 2022; Libassi, 2022; Marston, 2021; Van de Camp, 2016). For instance, Klein (2022) shows how artisanal miners in Madagascar contest the state’s attempts to claim sovereignty over the subsurface.…”

Section: Political Geologies Of Wealth Identity and Wastementioning

confidence: 99%

Filling the hole? On new geographies of the subsurface

Bosworth

2023

Progress in Human Geography

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A proliferation of examinations of vertical, voluminous, subsurface, subterranean/subaqueous, geological, or underground relationships has emerged in the last few years of geographic thought. This article seeks to summarize four key themes in which the subsurface has gained prominence: geopolitics, natural resource extraction, cultural geographies, and epistemological politics. The article nonetheless critiques ahistorical, presentist, and/or Eurocentric tendencies in accounts of subsurface spaces, topographical verticalities, and the desire to “fill” a supposed “hole” of subsurface geographies. Altogether, I call for more precise, comparative, and historicized interpretations of the varieties of spatial relations above and below the surface of the earth.

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Section: Political Geologies Of Wealth Identity and Wastementioning

confidence: 99%

Filling the hole? On new geographies of the subsurface

Bosworth

2023

Progress in Human Geography

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The Terminator in the goldfields: speculative affects in an extractive frontier in Colombia

Jaramillo

2024

Royal Anthropological Inst

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This article analyses the relationships among speculative rumour, everyday storytelling, and financial speculation that impact small‐scale gold mining towns in Colombia. By following the stories surrounding the visit of Arnold Schwarzenegger to Marmato, a mining town in central Colombia, and its consequences, I explore how people speculate about such ‘speculative’ visits so as to reframe the events as part of wider colonial histories. I aim to comprehend the affective constellation of lives criss‐crossed by financial speculation and the political openings created by rumour, storytelling, and fabulation. I argue that people locate the Schwarzenegger visit as part of a crisis‐ridden history that counters the narratives of modern and responsible mining. The argument contributes to the conceptualization of speculation in anthropology, as well as to questions of history, temporality, and politics of extractive frontiers. The article is based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out between 2016 and 2019 in the central Andes of Colombia and with governmental and corporate representatives.

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Hidden tunnels, drowned dragons, and other subterranean secrets: Environmental politics of small-scale mining in Colombia

Cited by 2 publications

References 38 publications

Filling the hole? On new geographies of the subsurface

Filling the hole? On new geographies of the subsurface

The Terminator in the goldfields: speculative affects in an extractive frontier in Colombia

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