Mining Encounters Also available: Overheating: An Anthropology of Accelerated Change Thomas Hylland Eriksen Identity Destabilised: Living in an Overheated World Edited by Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Elisabeth Schober Boomtown: Runaway Globalisation on the Queensland Coast Thomas Hylland Eriksen Mining Encounters Extractive Industries in an Overheated World Edited by Robert Jan Pijpers and Thomas Hylland Eriksen First published 2019 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA www.plutobooks.com Copyright © Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Robert Jan Pijpers 2019 The right of the individual contributors to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7453 3837 8 Hardback ISBN 978 1 7868 0375 7 PDF eBook ISBN 978 1 7868 0377 1 Kindle eBook ISBN 978 1 7868 0376 4 EPUB eBook This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental standards of the country of origin. Typeset by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Simultaneously printed in the United Kingdom and United States of America Contents List of Figures and Maps vii Preface viii 1. Introduction: Negotiating the Multiple Edges of Mining Encounters 1 Robert Jan Pijpers and Thomas Hylland Eriksen 2. From Allegiance to Connection: Structural Injustice, Scholarly Norms and the Anthropological Ethics of Mining Encounters 21 Alex Golub 3. The ‘Shooting Fields of Porgera Joint Venture’: An Exploration of Corporate Power, Reputational Dynamics and Indigenous Agency 38 Catherine Coumans 4. Rubbish at the Border: A Minefield of Conservation Politics at the Lawa River, Suriname/French Guiana 59 Sabine Luning and Marjo de Theije 5. Territories of Contestation: Negotiating Mining Concessions in Sierra Leone 78 Robert Jan Pijpers 6. Drilling Down Comparatively: Resource Histories, Subterranean Unconventional Gas and Diverging Social Responses in Two Australian Regions 97 Kim de Rijke 7. Coal Trafficking: Reworking National Energy Security via Coal Transport at the North Karanpura Coalfields, India 121 Patrik Oskarsson and Nikas Kindo 8. Diamonds and Plural Temporalities: Articulating Encounters in the Mines of Sierra Leone 138 Lorenzo D’Angelo vi . mining encounters 9. Risky Encounters: The Ritual Prevention of Accidents in the Coal Mines of Kazakhstan 156 Eeva Kesküla Notes on Contributors 174 Index 176 Figures and Maps figures 4.1 Aerial view of Maripasoula and Antonio do Brinco on the banks of the River Lawa 64 6.1 The Warra coal mine memorial 101 6.2 Moonie oil memorabilia: public display of the drill bit that was used in the discovery of the Moonie oil field in 1961 105 6.3 Nightcap National Park often figures in Northern Rivers’ tourist and marketing documents 109 6.4 Living the village lifestyle at Bexhill in the Northern Rivers 111 6.5 Overheating in the Condamine River in 2016 116 maps 4.1 French Guiana border area 60 5.1 London Mining concession map 78 6.1 The study region of the Western Downs in the State of Queensland, Australia 100 6.2 Water bores (shown as circles) in the Queensland study region, March 2016 103 6.3 The Northern Rivers region in north-east New South Wales, including selected places 108 6.4 Registered water bores (shown as circles) and coal seam gas wells (triangles) in the Queensland study region, March 2016 113 Preface When the European Research Council (ERC) Advanced Grant project ‘Overheating: An anthropological history of the early 21st century’ started in 2012, we – the researchers – did not anticipate the centrality of mining and the resource industry in the overall project. In the event, virtually all the subprojects, including one by the Principal Investigator (Eriksen), two PhD projects, four postdoctoral projects and altogether 15 ethnographically based MA projects partly funded by ‘Overheating’ included a mining element, directly or indirectly. The economic boom of the early years of the twenty-first century, the crisis of 2007–8, the recovery of the subsequent years and the downturn in countries like Australia, Venezuela and Norway from around 2014 were all directly connected to the extractive industries, as is the phenomenal economic growth of certain countries, China being the most obvious example, in this period of accelerated change or overheating. Mining, as it slowly dawned upon us, is key to understanding the momentous changes shaping politics, social identities, economic relations and trade patterns in this turbulent age. Based on a workshop taking place in Oslo on 27–29 April 2015, this book follows previous Overheating publications on knowledge and power, destabilised identities, sustainability and growth, and the different facets of accelerated change in our day and age. Bringing together scholars approaching resource extraction from different per- spectives, from the legal to the symbolic, from the environmental to the economic, what holds the contributions to this book together is the ethno graphically informed emphasis on what we call the mining encounter, the interface, interaction and interpretations of the different actors and stakeholders brought together in extractive projects. As processes of negotiation within these encounters are placed centre stage, particular attention is drawn to the changing dynamics, the inequalities and the fluidity of extractive practices. In doing so, the various authors in this volume bring to light the tensions, negotiations and disparities between different actors in the extractive industries. The contributions of the editors and the process leading up to this publication have been funded by the ERC Advanced Grant project ‘Over- heating’, ERC Grant number 295843. We, the editors, would like to thank the ERC for its belief in our sprawling research project. Moreover, we preface . ix would like to extend a special thanks to the contributors-cum-workshop participants, and to Pluto Press for their encouragement and support. Robert Jan Pijpers Thomas Hylland Eriksen Oslo, 10 February 2018