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.