Kvinder og minedrift i små-skala i Afrika

Women and Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining in Sub-Saharan Africa:
On the Cultural Politics of “Formalization” Agendas

Lecture by BLAIR RUTHERFORD, Professor of Anthropology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

For the last decade or so, there have been growing efforts in Sub-Saharan Africa by governments, regional bodies, and donors to “formalize” artisanal and small-scale mining, a widespread livelihood activity for many deemed to be part of the “informal sector.”

Such efforts largely involve updating legislation and setting up new institutions and institutional arrangements to try to better regulate this large sector in order to increase tax revenue, limit environmental and occupational health harms, and limit conflicts with industrial mining operations, amongst other goals. 

Based on his involvement with several research projects examining such initiatives in light of the diverse forms of involvement of women in this sector in several Sub-Saharan African countries, he will discuss how such efforts to “legalize” become entangled in varied forms of gendered authority relations, livelihood strategies, and state-making. 

In so doing, he will raise questions about the nexus between gendered labour, power, and agendas for change.

BLAIR RUTHERFORD is a professor of Anthropology at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, where he was also founder and first director of the Institute of African Studies.

He is the author of Working on the Margins:  Black Workers, White Farmers in Post-Colonial Zimbabwe (2001, Zed Books & Weaver Press), The Ground of Politics: Zimbabwean Farm Workers in a Time of Change (forthcoming, Indiana University Press), and co-editor of Sexual Violence in Conflict and Post-Conflict Societies: International Agendas and African Contexts (2014, Routledge).