Overview

For much of the 20th Century, industrial mining in southern Africa stood at the very forefront of modernity, where it promised progress and economic development. Yet in the present, southern Africa is bedevilled by the toxic legacy of economic collapse, societal upheaval and environmental ruin. Industrial mining has transformed southern Africa at all levels, from its flora and fauna to its water and air. Globally, it has become clear that mineral extraction, once heralded as the epitome of progress, is central to the Climate Crisis in the Anthropocene. In this volume, the contributors acknowledge this and attempt to contribute to histories and ethnographies of mining in southern Africa in which the human is decentred. As such, the various chapters focus on animals and plants in relation to mining, and thus show a way forward for further research in southern Africa and beyond. Contributors are Innocent Dande, James R. Fairhead, Jan-Bart Gewald, Jan Jansen, Sabine Luning, Ettore Morelli, Joseph Mujere, Iva Peša, Jabulani Shaba, Saskia Stehouwer, Sandra Swart and Harry Wels.

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Jan-Bart Gewald is a socio-cultural historian of southern Africa and professor of African History at Leiden University. He has published widely, including Mining Kambove and Testing for Trypanosomiasis: Migrant Labour, Tsetse Flies, and Consumption, The Establishment of Colonial Authority and Suzerainty on the Luapula Border, Northern Rhodesia Katanga, 1904-1914 (2024) (ASCL). The late Sabine Luning (1959-2025) was associate professor at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology at Leiden University, focusing her research on Landscapes of Extraction. She published widely on the topic, amongst which Luning (2018), 'Mining Temporalities: Future perspectives', in Extractive Industries and Society 5(2): 281-286 (2018). Harry Wels is multispecies organizational ethnographer and associate professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, the African Studies Centre Leiden and extraordinary professor at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. He is Editor in Chief of the Journal of Organizational Ethnography.

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