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Miners on the move
Author(s) -
BOLAY MATTHIEU
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
american ethnologist
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.875
H-Index - 78
eISSN - 1548-1425
pISSN - 0094-0496
DOI - 10.1111/amet.13108
Subject(s) - temporalities , friendship , agency (philosophy) , reproduction , sociology , schism , social reproduction , social life , ephemeral key , political science , law , social science , politics , social capital , ecology , biology , algorithm , computer science
The expansion of gold mining in West Africa transforms miners’ relations to space and time as they move frequently from one mining site to the next. Whereas labor, reproduction, and social integration are expected to be durably organized through the social institutions of marriage, mentorship, and friendship, itinerant miners recast these institutions in a compressed and nonbinding form. As evictions from illegal mines multiply, miners create a life across ephemeral spaces by turning the financial and social resources accruing in intimacy into portable anchorages. They engage in relationships that mimic institutions of village life but whose significance is detached from long‐term local prospects. Thus, young men find themselves constructing adult manhood while on an indefinite journey. Despite the risks and indeterminacy that characterize their labor, they seek to regain a sense of agency and reconcile antagonist temporalities and moralities of exchange that extraction progressively disrupts.