Mining, Mobility, and Social Change in the Global South

Mining, Mobility, and Social Change in the Global South
Author: Gerardo Castillo Guzmán
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2023-12-22
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1003834639

This volume focuses on how, why, under what conditions, and with what effects people move across space in relation to mining, asking how a focus on spatial mobility can aid scholars and policymakers in understanding the complex relation between mining and social change. This collection centers the concept of mobility to address the diversity of mining-related population movements as well as the agency of people engaged in these movements. This volume opens by introducing both the historical context and conceptual tools for analyzing the mining-mobility nexus, followed by case study chapters focusing on three regions with significant histories of mineral extraction and where mining currently plays an important role in socio-economic life: the Andes, Central and West Africa, and Melanesia. Written by authors with expertise in diverse fields, including anthropology, development studies, geography, and history, case study chapters address areas of both large- and smallscale mining. They explore the historical-geographical factors shaping mining-related mobilities, the meanings people attach to these movements, and the relations between people’s mobility practices and the flows of other things put in motion by mining, including capital, ideas, technologies, and toxic contamination. The result is an important volume that provides fresh insights into the social geographies and spatial politics of extraction. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of mining and the extractive industries, spatial politics and geography, mobility and migration, development, and the social and environmental dimensions of natural resources more generally.

Mining and Development in Sierra Leone

Mining and Development in Sierra Leone
Author: Robert Jan Pijpers
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 230
Release: 2024-10-30
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 104018670X

Mining and Development in Sierra Leone examines how different actors in Sierra Leone use the effects of large-scale mining to navigate and transform the challenging conditions of life. The book offers an in-depth analysis of the processes of development and change that mark resource extraction environments globally. Across the world, resource extraction is assigned an important role in development agendas. Yet a key question is how development opportunities are given shape and accessed and how extraction’s negative impacts are dealt with in actual politics and practices. Set in the Northern Province of Sierra Leone during a global mining boom, this book shows how mining-cum-development’s multifaceted effects materialize. By taking the micro-politics of large-scale mining as its principal focus, the book analyzes a range of the most perplexing phenomena of life in Sierra Leone and scrutinizes the intricate and contentious processes of change unfolding in mining environments. Mining and Development in Sierra Leone goes beyond promise-or-problem dichotomies, offers key insights into the struggle for progress that characterizes the mining-development nexus, and provides innovative understandings of the resourceful ways in which different actors negotiate change and navigate uncertainty. This book will be of interest to students and scholars working on resource extraction, large-scale investments, globalization, and development, as well as to development practitioners, mining professionals, and policymakers.

Tree Plantation Extractivism in Chile

Tree Plantation Extractivism in Chile
Author: Alejandro Mora-Motta
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2024-03-29
Genre: Nature
ISBN: 1003857922

This book examines how extractivism transforms territories and affects the well-being of rural people, drawing on in-depth fieldwork conducted on tree plantations in Chile. The book argues that pine and eucalyptus monoculture plantations in southern Chile are a form of extractivism representing a mode of nature appropriation that captures large amounts of natural resources to produce wooden-based raw materials with little processing and an export-oriented focus. The book discusses the nexus of extractivism, territorial transformations, well-being, and emerging resistances using a participatory action research methodological approach in the Region of Los Ríos, southern Chile. The findings show how the configuration of an extractivist logging enclave generated a substantial and irrevocable reordering of human-nature relations, resulting in the territorial and ontological occupation of rural places that disrupted the fundamental human needs of peasants and indigenous people. The book maintains that Chile's green growth development approach does not challenge the consolidated tree plantation enclave controlled by large multinationals. Instead, green growth legitimises the extractivist logic. The book draws parallels with other countries and regions to contribute to wider debates surrounding these topics. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the extractive industries, development studies, political ecology, and natural resource governance.

Youth, Inequality and Social Change in the Global South

Youth, Inequality and Social Change in the Global South
Author: Hernan Cuervo
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2019-02-25
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 9811337500

This book gathers international and interdisciplinary work on youth studies from the Global South, exploring issues such as continuity and change in youth transitions from education to work; contemporary debates on the impact of mobility, marginalization and violence on young lives; how digital technologies shape youth experiences; and how different institutions, cultures and structures generate a diversity of experiences of what it means to be young. The book is divided into four broad thematic sections: (a) Education, work and social structure; (b) Identity and belonging; (c) Place, mobilities and marginalization; and (d) Power, social conflict and new forms of political participation of youth.

Mining Capitalism

Mining Capitalism
Author: Stuart Kirsch
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 329
Release: 2014-06-07
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0520957598

Corporations are among the most powerful institutions of our time, but they are also responsible for a wide range of harmful social and environmental impacts. Consequently, political movements and nongovernmental organizations increasingly contest the risks that corporations pose to people and nature. Mining Capitalism examines the strategies through which corporations manage their relationships with these critics and adversaries. By focusing on the conflict over the Ok Tedi copper and gold mine in Papua New Guinea, Stuart Kirsch tells the story of a slow-moving environmental disaster and the international network of indigenous peoples, advocacy groups, and lawyers that sought to protect local rivers and rain forests. Along the way, he analyzes how corporations promote their interests by manipulating science and invoking the discourses of sustainability and social responsibility. Based on two decades of anthropological research, this book is comparative in scope, showing readers how similar dynamics operate in other industries around the world.

The Political Economy of Work in the Global South

The Political Economy of Work in the Global South
Author: Anita Hammer
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 217
Release: 2020-03-28
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1350305103

Part of the Critical Perspectives on Work and Employment series, this edited collection brings together contributions from leading international scholars to initiate an important dialogue between labour process analysis and scholarship on work in the Global South. This book characterises the forms of work and labour process that characterise globalising capitalism today and addresses core analytical concerns within Labour Process Theory and research on work in the South. It explores how a wide range of production relations in the Global South, ranging from formal to informal employment and self-employment, are embedded in wider social relations of gender, caste, religion and ethnicity, and are related to wider patterns of commodification and resistance. Drawing on cutting-edge research, the book's chapters consider a diverse range of working situations, covering migrant workers in the Middle East, commercial surrogacy work in India and cooperative garment workers in Argentina. In offering a novel reading of the political economy of work in the Global South and shedding light on lesser-considered fields of work and worker organization, this volume will provide new insights for making sense of the changing world of work for students, scholars, labour activists and practitioners alike.

Social Mobility in Developing Countries

Social Mobility in Developing Countries
Author: Vegard Iversen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 506
Release: 2021-12-17
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 0192650734

Social mobility is the hope of economic development and the mantra of a good society. There are disagreements about what constitutes social mobility, but there is broad agreement that people should have roughly equal chances of success regardless of their economic status at birth. Concerns about rising inequality have engendered a renewed interest in social mobility—especially in the developing world. However, efforts to construct the databases and meet the standards required for conventional analyses of social mobility are at a preliminary stage and need to be complemented by innovative, conceptual, and methodological advances. If forms of mobility have slowed in the West, then we might be entering an age of rigid stratification with defined boundaries between the always-haves and the never-haves-which does not augur well for social stability. Social mobility research is ongoing, with substantive findings in different disciplines—typically with researchers in isolation from each other. A key contribution of this book is the pulling together of the emerging streams of knowledge. Generating policy-relevant knowledge is a principal concern. Three basic questions frame the study of diverse aspects of social mobility in the book. How to assess the extent of social mobility in a given development context when the datasets by conventional measurement techniques are unavailable? How to identify drivers and inhibitors of social mobility in particular developing country contexts? How to acquire the knowledge required to design interventions to raise social mobility, either by increasing upward mobility or by lowering downward mobility?

African Artisanal Mining from the Inside Out

African Artisanal Mining from the Inside Out
Author: Sara Geenen
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2015-08-11
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 1317483219

Artisanal mining is commonly associated with violent conflict, rampant corruption and desperate poverty. Yet millions of people across Sub Sahara Africa depend on it. Many of them are living in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), home to important mineral reserves, but also to a plethora of armed groups and massive human rights violations. African Artisanal Mining from the Inside Out provides a rich and in-depth analysis of the Congolese gold sector. Instead of portraying miners and traders as passive victims of economic forces, regional conflicts or disheartening national policies, it focuses on how they gain access to and benefit from gold. It shows a professional artisanal mining sector governed by a set of specific norms, offering ample opportunities for flexible employment and local livelihood support and being well-connected to the local economy and society. It argues for the viability of artisanal gold mining in the context of weak African states and in the transition towards a post-conflict and more industrialized economy. This book will be of great interest to researchers and postgraduates studying natural resources and development as well as those in development studies, African studies, sociology, political economy, political ecology, legal pluralism, and history.

Chinese Migrants and Africa's Development

Chinese Migrants and Africa's Development
Author: Doctor Ben Lampert
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
Total Pages: 167
Release: 2014-06-12
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1780329199

China's recent stepping up of relations with Africa is one of the most significant developments on the African continent for decades. For some it promises an end to Africa's dependent aid relationships, as the Chinese bring expertise, technology and a stronger business focus. But for others it is no more than a new form of imperialism. This book is the first to systematically study the motivations, relationships and impact of this migration. It focuses not just on the Chinese migrants but also on the perceptions of, and linkages to, their African 'hosts'. By studying this everyday interaction we get a much richer picture of whether this is South-South cooperation, as political leaders would have us believe, or a more complex relationship that can both compromise and encourage African development.

Global Trends 2040

Global Trends 2040
Author: National Intelligence Council
Publisher: Cosimo Reports
Total Pages: 158
Release: 2021-03
Genre:
ISBN: 9781646794973

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.