Mining for the Future: Dynamics of Artisanal Gold Mining Practice and Governance in the Balan-Bakama (Mande, Mali)

This dissertation examines the social organization of artisanal gold mining in the Balan-Bakama, a zone of the Mande area of southern Mali (West-Africa). Based on fieldwork conducted primarily in 2010-11 I show how villagers and specifically their male and female mining authorities govern mining sites in the territory of their village. Unlike many artisanal mines that are described in the literature as enclaves disconnected from surrounding communities, Balan-Bakama artisanal mines are part of a locally placed extractive economy. Most inhabitants of the Balan-Bakama are both subsistence farmers and artisanal gold miners (at home or as seasonal migrants). These livelihood activities had traditionally been bound to the rainy season and dry season respectively. With a steadily rising gold price, women miners were increasingly engaged in rainy season surface mining while men mined using the new hard-rock mining technique. With placer mining, these techniques form the set of three artisanal mining techniques applied in the Balan-Bakama. In Mande, gold is categorized as owned by bush spirits who control the uncivilized space beyond villagersâ fields. In order to be able to mine safely and successfully, communities and individual miners are obliged to convince bush spirits to share their gold with humans and to refrain from causing accidents. People are able to gain access to gold through sacrifices, by following the rules of mining sites and by avoiding conflict. If local miners are successful, they will be joined by seasonal migrant miners. In an area characterized by high rural-urban migration but some rural-rural migration, village communities try manipulate migration patterns by stimulating mining to retain young men. Hoping to expand the village in order to achieve a locally defined modernity and form a closer connection to regional centers villagers work to attract informal miners and industrial mining corporations.

Department dc:contributor.department

Anthropology

Year dc:date.issued

2017

Author dc:creator

• Kuhn, Esther

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Lambek, Michael

• Africa
• Extractive Industries
• Gold
• Mali
• Mining
• Modernity

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1807/80820

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:utoronto.scholaris.ca:1807/80820