Paper short abstract:

In Sierra Leone mining landscapes are places of great political contest. By comparing two ethnographic cases this paper argues that these landscapes can be analyzed as forms of social memory that point to a specific history of violence, terror and uncertainties.

Paper long abstract:

In Sierra Leone, the environmental and economic impacts of mining is a source of great concern for local communities. Through the usual weapons of the weak (e.g. sabotages, thefts, rumors) and the idiom of the occult, the population expresses dissatisfaction with a modernity which has always been promised by national rulers but never achieved.

By comparing two ethnographic cases this paper argues that mining landscapes are places of great political contest at local and national level. In the first case I will show how the complex interplay of negotiations between diamond miners and inhabitants of mining areas can be mediated by the presence of spiritual beings locally named debul. In the second case I will explore the ways in which the inhabitants of a mining region interpreted in terms of occult some unexpected and mysterious events occurred to a large-scale rutile mining company.

For both cases, I suggest that mining landscapes are never neutral sites. They embody past experiences which simultaneously connect and dis-connect places and people. From an anthropological perspective, occult mining narratives can be analyzed as forms of social memory that point to a history of violence, terror and uncertainties that are inscribed in the landscape and dwelling practices. The basic idea of this paper is that the local discourses on the occult are not just ways to make sense of the uncertainties and anxieties of a globalized modernity, but, above all, highly politicized practices.