How to build a body in a minescape: toxic conditions in artisanal gold mines

• In Event: STS Underground: Responsible and Sustainable Mining

Abstract

Artisanal and small-scale gold mining is a toxic practice. Every day, according to media and policy publications, approximately 15 million individuals worldwide toil under harsh work conditions, exposing themselves to toxic heavy metals, dangerous work conditions, and even death. Characterized as a “poverty-driven” activity, it is both vilified for its poor labor conditions and environmentally destructive practices and lauded for its ability to maintain and support the economic security of individuals forced to live life “on the margins.” Drawing from the literature in environmental justice, ecological anthropology, and political ecology, I explore what it means to be a miner working in an artisanal gold mine. Adopting Appadurai’s suffix, -scape, to think of the mine as a minescape, it explores how miners build themselves safe bodies in a precarious place and seeks to reconsider the limits of our understanding of the word “toxic” and how particular people, places, and practices get defined as toxic. Is toxicity simply limited to “matter out of place”; matter which disrupts the physiological and neurological functioning of our bodies? Can the concept of toxicity be expanded to include the conditions that allowed for the production and maintenance of minescapes? This work contributes to STS research on toxicology, occupational and environmental risk, and the Anthropocene to rethink how toxicity is made real and tangible, how occupational and environmental risk is made normal and acceptable for miners, and how conditions in artisanal mines are maintained and stabilized despite increased attention to labor and environmental practices.

Author

• jessica worl, University of Michigan-School for Environment and Sustainability