Anthropology of Precious Minerals


Book Description

Based on a Wenner-Gren international workshop, held at the Royal Ontario Museum, this book addresses the complexity of human-mineral engagements through ethnographic case studies and anthropological reflections on different people and the minerals they deem 'precious.'




The Anthropology of Resource Extraction


Book Description

This book offers an overview of the key debates in the burgeoning anthropological literature on resource extraction. Resources play a crucial role in the contemporary economy and society, are required in the production of a vast range of consumer products and are at the core of geopolitical strategies and environmental concerns for the future of humanity. Scholars have widely debated the economic and sociological aspects of resource management in our societies, offering interesting and useful abstractions. However, anthropologists offer different and fresh perspectives – sometimes complementary and at other times alternative to these abstractions – based on field researches conducted in close contact with those actors (individuals as well as groups and institutions) that manipulate, anticipate, fight for, or resist the extractive processes in many creative ways. Thus, while addressing questions such as: "What characterizes the anthropology of resource extraction?", "What topics in the context of resource extraction have anthropologists studied?", and "What approaches and insights have emerged from this?", this book synthesizes and analyses a range of anthropological debates about the ways in which different actors extract, use, manage, and think about resources. This comprehensive volume will serve as a key reading for scholars and students within the social sciences working on resource extraction and those with an interest in natural resources, environment, capitalism, and globalization. It will also be a useful resource for practitioners within mining and development.




Museums and the History of Computing


Book Description

Museums and the History of Computing examines the critical role that cultural organizations, such as museums and galleries, play in shaping ‘digital heritage’: the cultural heritage surrounding computer technology. Focusing on digital technologies as objects and practices that museums collect, exhibit, and preserve for the future, this book highlights how and why museums play a crucial role in preserving the rich heritage of the digital world, constructing powerful narratives that help make it relevant to the public. It demonstrates that the museum can be a powerful means of safeguarding and interpreting ephemeral and continually changing digital technology, offering new pathways for rethinking the very meaning of digital objects and practices in contemporary societies. It provides practices and strategies for the preservation and exhibition of computing artifacts and ways to accommodate and respond to narratives about histories of computing that circulate in the public arena. Bringing together leading museum and university researchers and practitioners, and mobilizing cross-cutting debates and approaches in areas such as museum studies, cultural heritage, history of technology, anthropology, and media studies, this book challenges us to think critically about what ‘digital’ is when examined not only as a tool but as a cultural object deserving of attention and a place within the museum. Museums and the History of Computing is for museum studies students and researchers as well as museum practitioners – especially those with an interest in digital technology and heritage. It will be of interest to researchers and students interested in histories of computing and digital media and in digital media studies.




Norms and Illegality


Book Description

Norms and Illegality: Intimate Ethnographies and Politics explores liminal and illegal practices in relation to political control and cultural normativity. The contributors draw on years of ethnographic experiences in Greece, Guatemala, Hong Kong, Italy, Madagascar, Mali, Philippines, and Thailand to study the contradictions of what is legal and illegal. They explore the production of illegal subjects by the state, the creation of illegal and normative values by liminal and illegal actors, and the mutual entanglements of legal and illegal in the public domains of markets and trade networks. This volume shows that criminalization policies are not necessarily oriented toward erasing crime. Instead, the contributors maintain that opaque spaces ensure the efficacy of control and outwardly conform to the rhetoric and ethics of global neoliberalism. Within these contexts, the contributors shed light on moral economies and frames of value entailed in systems of representation that have been set up by individuals who are deemed illegal, liminal, or deviant in their confrontations with the state. This book is recommended for students and scholars of anthropology, political science, and urban studies.




The Afterlives of Extraction


Book Description

The frontiers of extraction are expanding rapidly, driven by a growing demand for minerals and metals that is often motivated by sustainability considerations. Two volumes of International Development Policy are dedicated to the paradoxes and futures of green extractivism, with analyses of experiences from five continents. In this, the second of the two volumes, the 22 authors, using different conceptual approaches and in different empirical contexts, demonstrate the alarming obduracy of the logic of extractivism, even - and perhaps especially - in the growing support for the so-called green transition. The authors highlight the complex and enduring legacies of resource extraction and the urgent need to move beyond extractive models of development towards alternative pathways that prioritise social justice, environmental sustainability, democratic governance and the well-being of both humans and non-humans. They also caution us against the assumption that anti-extraction is anti-extractivist, that post-extraction is post-extractivism, and they critically attune us to the systemic nature of extractivism in ways that both connect and transcend any particular site or scale. This volume accompanies IDP 15, The Lives of Extraction: Identities, Communities, and the Politics of Place.




Social and Cultural Anthropology: The Key Concepts


Book Description

Social and Cultural Anthropology: the Key Concepts is an easy to use A-Z guide to the central concepts that students are likely to encounter in this field. Now fully updated, this third edition includes entries on: Material Culture Environment Human Rights Hybridity Alterity Cosmopolitanism Ethnography Applied Anthropology Gender Cybernetics With full cross-referencing and revised further reading to point students towards the latest writings in Social and Cultural Anthropology, this is a superb reference resource for anyone studying or teaching in this area.




The Lives of Extraction


Book Description

The frontiers of extraction are expanding rapidly, driven by a growing demand for minerals and metals that is often motivated by sustainability considerations. Two volumes of International Development Policy are dedicated to the paradoxes and futures of green extractivism, with analyses of experiences from five continents. In this, the first of these two volumes, 16 authors offer a critical and nuanced understanding of the social, cultural and political dimensions of extraction. The experiences of communities, indigenous peoples and workers in extractive contexts are deeply shaped by narratives, imaginaries and the complexity of social contexts. These dimensions are crucial to making extraction possible and to sustaining its expansion, but also to identifying possibilities for resistance, and to paving the way for alternative, post-extractive economies. This volume is accompanied by IDP 16, The Afterlives of Extraction: Alternatives and Sustainable Futures.




The Eyes of the World


Book Description

Orientations -- Prologue: an introduction to the personal, methodological, and spatiotemporal scales of the project -- The eyes of the world: themes of movement, visualization, and (dis)embodiment in Congolese digital minerals extraction (an introduction) -- Mining worlds. War stories: seeing the world through war ; The magic chain: interdimensional movement in the supply chain for the "Black Minerals" ; Mining futures in the ruins -- The eyes of the world on Bisie and the game of tags ; Bisie during the time of movement ; Insects of the forest ; The battle of Bisie ; Closure ; Game of tags: auditing the digital minerals supply chain ; Conclusion: chains, holes, and wormholes.




Sites, Traces, and Materiality


Book Description

Sites, Traces, and Materiality proposes a new materialist model for archaeology that brings together the concept of site ontology from geography, a novel analysis of archaeological materiality as traces, and engagement with the concept of animacy hierarchy, in order to explore how geological materials can be reconceived as active. Using a sustained analysis of ancient Honduras, the book provides a contribution to global medieval studies showing how the concept of alchemy can help foreground the kinds of experiential knowledge indigenous people used to advance their technological engagements with mineral matter. Addressing a concern often raised with new materialist work in archaeology, the book relies on indigenous philosophy of the contemporary and historic Lenca people-- the descendants of the people who created the archaeological locales the book examines-- for guidance on how to think about minerals as lively. Taking seriously contemporary Lenca concerns with threats to water and land from global industries, the book links the archaeological case study to the present day politics of mineral extraction. Intended for readers interested in history, archaeology, and cultural studies, the book is accessibly written and appropriate for students as well as academics.