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Key Words globalization, corporation, community, state, engagement
Abstract The scope for an anthropology of mining has been dramatically transformed since the review by Ricardo Godoy, published in this review journal in 1985. The minerals boom of the 1980s led to an aggressive expansion of mine development in greenfield areas, many of them the domains of indigenous communities. Under considerable pressure, the conventional binary contest between states and corporations over the benefits and impacts of mining has been widened to incorporate the representations.of local communities, and broad but unstable mining communities now coalesce around individual projects. Focused primarily on projects in developing nations of the Asia-Pacific region, this review questions the often-monolithic characterizations of state, corporate, and community forms of agency and charts the debate among anthropologists involved in mining, variously as consultants, researchers, and advocates, about appropriate terms for their engagement.
BOOM TIMES? MINING AND ANTHROPOLOGY
During the two decades since this journal published a seminal review of anthropological perspectives on mining (Godoy 1985), the field has been transformed by dramatic developments in the global mining industry and corresponding shifts in the nature and emphasis of related research and theory. An earlier focus on mining labor and the threat posed by transnational mining capital to the sovereignty of newly independent nation-states has given way to a much broader frame for enquiry that addresses the exceptional complexity of the relationships that coalesce around mining projects. Yet, despite the potential of ethnographic studies of mining to address questions of considerable contemporary interest in anthropology, such as globalization, indigenous rights, and new social movements, the anthropology of mining remains largely under-researched and under-theorized (see Knapp & Pigott 1997). It is surprising, given the transnational nature of the industry, that studies of mining have been persistently parochial and regional in their scope.
This paper reviews the range of developments in the field since Godoy's essay, identifies a number of areas that warrant further consideration, and argues the case for re-conceiving mining projects as sites for critical anthropological research.
The remarkable boom in mineral prices of the late 1970s and early 1980s (Figure 1) promoted an explosion of mineral prospecting activity across the globe, particularly in the largely under-explored Asia-Pacific region. Most of the mining projects realized as...