Digging Women: Towards a New Agenda for Feminist Critiques of Mining

Citation:

Lahiri-Dutt, Kuntala. 2012. “Digging Women: Towards a New Agenda for Feminist Critiques of Mining.” Gender, Place & Culture 19 (2): 193–212. 

Author: Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

Abstract:

ENGLISH ABSTRACT:
This article addresses how a contemporary feminist perspective can problematise the ancient human endeavour of mining, and indicates which direction research on the interface between extractive industries and gender could usefully take. Feminist research has confronted masculinist discourses of mining by questioning the naturalisation of men as industrial workers, and by illustrating the gender-selective impacts of capitalist mining projects. The article probes the sources of these masculinist discourses of mining and reinterprets these critiques. Most importantly, by highlighting the diverse range of extractive practices that reflect different stages of surplus accumulation, it encourages a rethinking of mining itself as an area of feminine work. Finally, it makes tentative suggestions as to how the field of women and mining might be examined and addressed by contemporary feminists. A postcapitalist feminist critique of mining would hinge upon revealing women's agency in mining and revisit the conventional definitions of mining as industrial work and begin to see the feminine livelihoods in mining.
 
SPANISH ABSTRACT: 
Este artículo aborda el tema de cómo una perspectiva feminista contemporánea puede problematizar la antigua tarea humana de la minería, e indica qué dirección útil puede tomar la investigación sobre la interfase entre las industrias extractivas y el género. La investigación feminista ha confrontado discursos masculinistas de la minería por medio del cuestionamiento de la naturalización de los hombres como trabajadores industriales, y a través de la ilustración de los impactos género-selectivos de los proyectos de minería capitalista. Exploro en las fuentes de estos discursos masculinistas de minería y reinterpreto estas críticas. Más importante, resaltando el amplio rango de prácticas extractivas que reflejan las diferentes etapas de acumulación de excedente, exhorto repensar la minería en sí misma como un área de trabajo femenino. Finalmente, hago sugerencias provisorias de cómo el campo de las mujeres y la minería podría ser examinado y abordado por las y los feministas contemporáneos. Una crítica feminista de la minería giraría en torno a la revelación de la agencia de las mujeres en la minería y una revisión de las definiciones convencionales de la minería como trabajo industrial y comenzar a ver las formas de sustento femeninas en la minería.
 
CHINESE ABSTRACT: 
本文探讨当代女性主义视角如何问题化早期人类的采矿活动,并指出研究采矿工业与性别交界的可行方向。女性主义研究透过质疑男性等同劳工的自然化现象,以及描绘资本主义采矿计划中性别筛选的影响,挑战了采矿业的男性气概论述。我则进一步探究采矿业中男性气概论述的根源,并重新诠释上述之批评。更重要的是,藉由强调采矿实践的多元类型,及其所反映的剩余价值积累的不同阶段,我鼓吹将采矿重新思考为女性化之工作。最后我将对当代女性主义如何探讨女性与采矿场域提出实验性的建议,此一女性主义的矿业批判是以发掘女性在矿业中的主体性为枢纽,并重新检视将采矿业视为工业工作的传统定义,开始正视采矿中的女性生活。
 

Keywords: informal mining, gender, women, representations, mining technology, mining impacts, minería informal, gênero, Mujeres, representaciones, tecnología minera, impactos de la minería, 非正式采矿, 性别, 女性, 代议, 采矿技术, 采矿之影响

Annotation:

Quotes:

“I note that feminist critiques can deconstruct such essential masculinity by appreciating the enormous evidence of women’s agency – in their productive roles in mines and at home, and in their resistance to exploitations of mining. What I add to the feminist epistemology is a new way of looking at the mineral extractive practices, presenting mining as an informal, and highly feminine, economic endeavor” ( Lahiri-Dutt 2012, 193). 

“A feminist critique of technocentric, hyper-masculine mining cannot be based on women as victims, bearers of burdens of dislocations or daughters who might have dubious links with Mother Earth. My hope is to encourage feminist geographers to gaze critically not only at the miner, but also at mining through a ‘gender lens’” (194). 

“Technology-dependence in extractive industries is relevant to a feminist critique because a sexual division of labour is embedded in the way men and women work in factories… women and men participate in different spaces, and usually operate different ‘physical technologies’…. Sexual division of labor is justified as the natural complementarity of roles of women ad men, but is usually accompanied by a vertical sexual division of labour or a stratified division that concentrates women into the bottom strata, with discriminatory wages and poor working conditions” (196).

“One sees that the masculinities of industrial mining practices are constructed in three main ways: through the symbolism of size and capital/technology; structure of the industry; and produced and reproduced identities” (199).

“The concentration of women’s labour in this kind [artisanal small-scale] of mining reasserts current global trends in respect to women’s work and indicates that all mining is neither essentially corporatized nor always exploitative, no alienated from wider socio-political and economic forces changing rural economics in poorer countries. The numbers of women in ASM is high and on the rise” (202).

“As liberalization and structural adjustment programmes set a model of development, they also fuel the uncontrolled growth of poverty-driven gold mining by marginalized and impoverished peasants. During the explosion of ASM in the post-reform Ghana economy, women have taken up ASK in large numbers to provide family subsistence. Consequently, women are overrepresented in informal mining; while women compromise around 15% of the legal small-scale metal mining labour force they form over 50% of the illegal, galampsey, miners” (202). 

Topics: Development, Economies, Extractive Industries, Feminisms, Gender, Women, Masculinity/ies, Gendered Discourses, Gendered Power Relations, Livelihoods

Year: 2012

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