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- Convenors:
-
Jolynna Sinanan
(University of Manchester)
Thomas McNamara (La Trobe University)
Send message to Convenors
- Discussant:
-
Nick Bainton
(University of Queensland)
- Formats:
- Panels
- Location:
- Hancock Library, room 2.22
- Sessions:
- Monday 2 December, -
Time zone: Australia/Sydney
Short Abstract:
The anthropology of mining tends to focus on environmental impact and social change for affected communities. This panel explores precarious labour for workers in resource extraction industries. In what ways do making a living from mining shape work, aspirations and future orientations?
Long Abstract:
Resource extraction industries provide configurations of economic, political and social relationships where notions of value in anthropology and indeed the values of anthropology are most obviously demonstrated (and contested). Applied anthropologists work with NGOs to contest mining projects or to limit their environmental impact or with companies as part of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) initiatives, while scholars of anthropology scrutinise kinds of social change associated with resource extraction (e.g Kirsch 2014). However, to date, the experiences of workers in mining industries have received relatively less attention. A 'good' mining company (either genuine or as a form of greenwashing) exercises innovative CSR, is conscious of its impact on the environment and affected communities (see Welker 2014). Yet, the ways in which mining companies regard their workforce draws less scholarly investigation. This panel addresses this lacuna by focussing on various forms of labour within the mining industry. We seek to examine a continuum of experiences that range from semi-formal extractive livelihoods to professional specialists. Common to these experiences is a growing sense of precariousness due to the financial structures the determine the ways mines operate. By foregrounding labour in the anthropology of mining, the panel contributes to studies of precarious of work, exploring how 'the precariat' has expanded to include highly skilled and relatively well-paid workers (see Hann & Parry 2018). We also consider the implications of making a living in the mining industries for aspirations and future orientations of workers.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Monday 2 December, 2019, -Thomas McNamara (La Trobe University) Jolynna Sinanan (University of Manchester)
Paper short abstract:
This paper uses a comparison of Zambian and Australian mine workers to unpack commonalities and differences among experiences of precarious labour
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores configurations of economic, political and social relationships commonly associated with mine labour. It describes the wide variety of mine workers' experiences, ranging from semi-formal extractive livelihoods to professional specialists, while noting that almost all mine employees feel a sense of precariousness due to the financial structures the determine the ways mines operate. By foregrounding labour in the anthropology of mining, the panel contributes to studies of precarious of work, exploring how 'the precariat' has expanded to include highly skilled and relatively well-paid workers (see Hann & Parry 2018). This paper introduces two case studies. It describes how Zambian mine workers turn to their union to provide pay-day loans, food-on-credit and insurance schemes, a response to precarity that necessitates the unions grow ever more compliant with management and reduce union militancy. Through this process trade union leaders, who are frequently Zambian neoliberalism's strongest critiques, perform the political and emotional labor that enables miners' precarious labour. In Australia, FIFO (fly-in, fly-out), DIDO (drive-in, drive-out) and BIBO (bus-in, bus-out) workers have been understudied because their relative wealth and access to resources are taken for granted (Baldassar, 2016; Miller, 2010; Olwig and Sorensen, 2002). This paper considers how these workers use digital media to make and maintain relationships, with digital platforms serving as extensions of reciprocal exchanges between people and wider socialities, revealing how workers and their families navigate expectations, obligations, negotiations and regional identities.
Kari Dahlgren (Monash University)
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the gendered politics of shiftwork and the role of women in mining labour precarity in a Queensland coal town. I explore the intersection of the temporality of labour with the pursuit of individual and familial life projects, in particular the rise of long-distance commuting.
Paper long abstract:
Drawing from fieldwork in a Central Queensland coal mining town, Moranbah, this paper examines the gendered politics of shiftwork and the complex role of women in mining labour precarity. I explore the intersection of the temporality of labour organization with the pursuit of individual and familial life projects, in particular, the ways in which shift work encourages long-distance commuting such as fly-in-fly-out arrangements. The stories of young women show how the organization of labour intersects with life projects and familial priorities such that, beyond merely responding to the demands of capital, people's desires, morals, and affects also feed back into such structures (Bear et al. 2015; Gibson-Graham 2006 [1996]). Such insights have particular consequences for the analysis of precarity, particularly the gendered implications of post-Fordist labour transformation in contemporary extractive economies and its social effects. Although increased precarity has been linked to the feminization of labour (Standing 2016) through the rise of flexible schedules, this is quite different to the type of flexible labour demanded by the rotating shift schedule of mines. Instead of allowing for the maintenance of social relations and particularly childcare— 'relational autonomy' (Millar 2014)—the new form of precarious labour in Moranbah does not allow for flexible work arrangements. Rather, rigid work arrangements demand flexible people, thus upsetting established household organization and gendered divisions of labour. However, the paper will show that these are always a co-constitutive result of personal desire and familial life projects within structured policies and preferences of extractive capital.
I-Chang Kuo (Australian National University)
Paper short abstract:
This article will contribute to anthropological studies on mining labour by addressing how PNG workers have learned to work with Chinese workers in the Ramu Nickel mine, and how the working relationships with Chinese workers influence how PNG workers understand their works and male identities.
Paper long abstract:
This article aims to demonstrate the changing understandings of masculinities by illustrating the ways in which Papua New Guinean workers and Chinese expatriate workers work together within the Ramu Nickel mine. Earlier anthropological studies on mining labour in African countries have explored issues such as the agency of local male labour, the formation of various sorts of individualistic manhood, relations amongst workers, unions and the company, and the changing definitions of manhood. Studies on mining labour in Papua New Guinea (PNG) also show us that both local male workers and migrant male workers are disintegrated from the traditional ways of defining their manhood and are trying to re-define their manhood through the employment from the mine. Reading these findings, I would like to argue that it is necessary to study the experiences of PNG mining workers in a context where the mine is owned and operated by a Chinese company. To study the inception of the Ramu Nickel mine, Graeme Smith's works have reminded us of the importance of unpacking the differences amongst various Chinese companies, Chinese managers and Chinese workers during the construction phase. To contribute to aforementioned findings, this article will address what have changed after the Ramu Nickel mine moves into the production phase since 2012, how PNG workers have learned to work with Chinese workers, and how the working experiences and relationships with Chinese workers influence the way in which PNG workers understand their works and male identities.
Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt (Australian National university)
Paper short abstract:
This paper reinstates the subterranean space as teeming with social and gendered life. It takes the audience along in the journey into the belly of a coal mine in colonial India to explore the underground as a gendered space.
Paper long abstract:
The visible and exposed surface has for too long been the primary space that is implied in conventional geographic texts, the plane 'where most of the action is', and where values are generated by human labour. In contrast, the underground is at once the womb of the earth; the darkness of it invoking imaginaries of hell or the netherworld. Human geographers have considered the underground as the third dimension of geographical territory, yet the space has remained poorly considered. Conventionally, human geographers, archaeologists, and anthropologists have known the underground primarily as the source of 'stuff' that is not intrinsically valuable until they are extracted. This material attention has tended to ignore how the space is co-constituted by the people who inhabit and work in it.
This paper steps aside from these imaginations of the underground, and descend to the subterranean space not only to reinstate it as one that is teeming with social life. It will take the readers along in the journey into the belly of a coal mine. Once the eyes and senses adjust to the darkness and the, one begins to see figures: shadowy, human bodies inhabiting, working in this space. One hears voices, mates calling out for other mates, the chiming of machines, bells ringing, and the swinging of large fans blowing air into the tunnel to enable you to breathe. This paper explores the underground as a gendered space, straddling across time.
Nick Bainton (University of Queensland)
Paper short abstract:
This discussion responds to the papers presented in the panel 'Precarity of labour in the resource extraction industries'.
Paper long abstract:
This discussion responds to the papers presented in the panel 'Precarity of labour in the resource extraction industries'. I shall comment on the common themes that link these papers, and the future directions for researching labour in the extractive industries, and continuities and departures from an earlier set of ethnographies that were concerned with labouring in large-scale mines.