Paper short abstract:

Drawing on scholarship in the field of postcolonial ecocriticism and anthropological insights in the field of disaster studies, I examine the ways in which Mbue’s How Beautiful We Were bears witness to the malevolent complicity between American Petro-imperialism and postcolonial autocracy.

Paper long abstract:

Set in the 1980s in an unspecified African country, Mbolo Mbue’s How Beautiful We Were is a captivating narrative of one community’s harrowing experience with the rapaciousness and duplicity of global oil capitalism. Told from the perspective of children turned revolutionaries, the novel documents four decades of the struggles of a fictional African village of Kosawa with the calamitous consequences of the relentless extractive activities of an American oil company, Pexton. Enabled by the local chief (Woja Beki) and the nation’s dictator (His Excellency), Pexton operates with impunity in Kosawa, poisoning the land, the bodies of water, and the local inhabitants with noxious chemicals and gases, causing high infant mortality rate in the community. But buoyed by the activism and suggestion of Konga, the village madman, the village takes the representatives of Pexton hostage, leading to a stand-off between transnational forces of oil capitalism and indigenous resistance aimed at protecting their land. Drawing and building on scholarship in the field of postcolonial ecocriticism and new anthropological insights in the field of disaster studies, I examine the ways in which Mbue’s novel bears witness to the malevolent complicity between American Petro-imperialism and postcolonial autocracy. I specifically demonstrate the ways in which the novel aestheticizes the nonchalant sociopathic activities of transnational oil corporations and their collusion with indigenous political elite to animate irreversible eco-social calamities in Africa.

Paper short abstract:

Extraversion keeps regimes in power through commercial alliances with external actors, even when unpopular or illegitimate at home. Through case studies from Sierra Leone and Liberia, this paper will examine the compatibility of the concept with regimes transformed by neoliberal reforms.

Paper long abstract:

Bayart defined extraversion as the practice by ruling African regimes of managing the "unequal relationship with the international economic system . . . to derive from it the resources necessary for their domestic overlordship" (2000: 231). Extraversion enables ruling regimes to stay in power through commercial alliances with external actors, even when domestically unpopular or illegitimate. During their recent history, Sierra Leone and Liberia presented classic examples of extraversion, with successive régimes holding power through commercial alliances with multinational corporations invested in extractive mineral industries and agribusiness. At various times in recent history, these companies went beyond supporting ruling regimes: they became their proxies by taking over state functions in the enclaves they controlled, including the provision of security and of a range of social services. In the aftermath of neoliberal land reform legislation passed in recent years, however, these commercial alliances are formed with an expanding range of political actors and institutions, well beyond central government--all of whom hold oversight and stand to benefit from them. Based on research in these two countries, this paper examines some of the ways in which politics of extraversion articulate with neoliberal policies.

Paper short abstract:

This paper, based on an ethnographic study of gold mining in the territory of Mambasa in the North East of the DRC, will identify the lessons of extraversion that are being constructed between Chinese operators and Congolese actors at different scales and temporalities.

Paper long abstract:

This contribution will mobilise an ethnographic reading of gold extraction by Chinese companies for almost a decade in the Mambasa territory in the North-East of the DR Congo. The objective of this ethnographic reading of gold extraction is to allow for lessons to be learned in relation to the types of extraversion that are being constructed with Congolese actors at various scales, with a view to the aesthetic (legitimating narratives), political, economic, ecological and technological domains. The understanding of extraversion will focus on the strategic modes of instrumentalisation of public, private, associative and community actors by Chinese entrepreneurs in search of minerals (gold in particular) in the Mambasa territory in the North-East of the DRC. In view of the ecological and economic disasters posed by the Chinese presence in the Mambasa mines, the analysis of extraversion will make it possible to understand the strategies of subjugation and dependence by reshaping the past, present and future of regional and global mining governance. The analysis of contestation, diversion, denunciation, grievance and popular resistance will enable the study to better understand the real issues at stake, beyond the narratives of extraversion. The careful study of extractivist projects led by Chinese actors will be criticized in its double discourse as they are sometimes perceived as new colonialist invaders, sometimes as allies of an economic revival of Africa in its insertion into international trade.

Paper short abstract:

This paper questions the problem of the past in the future of Africa’s relationship with the world economy from the viewpoint of the under-studied nexus between critical minerals’ global value chains and the roles of justification and codification played by legal intermediaries.

Paper long abstract:

In the past fifteen years, the formidable stakes of Africa’s geological wealth for the ‘energy transition’ have triggered a new Scramble. In 2019, the Economist judged the current scramble more ‘benign’ due to the unprecedented extent of foreign diplomatic, strategic, and commercial ties – with former imperial European cores, along with the US, China and other emerging economies. In Burundi, where rare earths have recently started been extracted at an industrial scale, but whose colonial and postcolonial trajectory has been characterized by acute levels of violence, the current scramble appears a repeat from the past. This paper questions the problem of the past in the future of Africa’s relationship with the world economy from the viewpoint of the under-studied nexus between critical minerals’ global value chains and the roles of justification and codification played by legal intermediaries. Embracing the global turn in history, law and political sociology, it examines this relationship in the framework of “imperial encounters” (drawing on Bertrand 2007) as symbolic, institutional, and professional spaces of reciprocal yet unequal connections between the African South and the world. Articulated with ethnographic fieldwork in Burundi, participant observation at international conferences, and ethnographic work on international dispute settlement mechanisms - this theoretical framework underscores Burundi’s trajectory as exceptional (due to the combination of dependent extraversion of the field of state power, and predatory extraction of the country’s resources) and characteristic of the structural effects of the relationship between law, politics and capital accumulation in negotiating Africa’s position in globalization.

Paper short abstract:

This paper examines Gbaya artisanal mining practices at the interface with French colonial and Chinese extractive encounters. It considers ‘extraversion’ as a specifically ‘technical’ mode of action, through which Gbaya miners have creatively appropriated both gold and its modes of extraction.

Paper long abstract:

In the East Region of Cameroon, gold was first ‘discovered’ in the 1930s through French colonial extraction. It has since been mined artisanally by local Gbaya communities until the recent arrival of Chinese private mining companies who have radically depleted local gold stocks through land grabs and mechanized extraction since the 2010s.

These two periods constitute a historical doubling that structures the political economy of this region and the lives of its inhabitants, that are bracketed by two, temporal, resource frontiers and moments of dispossession within which processes of generativity and creativity have germinated. This paper explores the dynamics of ‘extraversion’ in these Gbaya extractive encounters with the French and Chinese, and the ways in which they are constituted in the technological realm.

As already marginalized communities grapple with the scarcity and aftermath of this resource, proclaiming that ‘the gold is gone’, they nevertheless continue to practice artisanal mining, innovating and experimenting with extractive techniques to sustain a livelihood. Drawing on 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork, this paper traces the sociomaterial transformations of mining and the forms of Gbaya technical and ritual innovation and creation arising out of the encounters with the French and Chinese.

In doing so, it considers ‘extraversion’ in this instance as a specifically ‘technical’ or technological mode of action, through which Gbaya miners have appropriated both gold and its modes of extraction.

Paper short abstract:

This paper deconstructs the emergence of Kpo Fire (artisanal crude oil refining) as an informal social response to oil extraction in Nigeria. It embodies the contrasting but interconnected perspectives of Kpor Fire as empowerment (youth agency/resistance) and disempowerment (environmental toxicity).

Paper long abstract:

Our research provides insight to understanding the emergent trends in oil extraction in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region, by analytically deconstructing artisanal crude oil refining, an informal economic activity locally referred to as “Kpo Fire”. We argue that it reflects the formal contradictions of oil extraction and associated informal social responses in the region. The paper hence synthesized narratives on Kpor Fire from two contrasting but interconnected perspectives of empowerment and disempowerment. On the one hand, Kpor Fire as empowerment reflects resistance and agency of marginalized youths to secure access to oil resources, promote oil-based livelihoods and local participation in the oil economy. On the other hand, Kpor Fire constitutes social disempowerment for communities, as the environmental toxicity (soot pollution) associated with the practice generates public health hazards with increasing exposure of communities to toxic fumes.

Paper short abstract:

This paper studies processes of extraversion and resource extraction in South Africa’s platinum mining industry, where chiefs have become active mining agents. It analyzes the alliance between chieftaincy, politicians and business leaders, as well as resulting disputes with customary landholders.

Paper long abstract:

This paper studies the relationship between processes of extraversion and resource extraction in the platinum mining industry of South Africa. Such mining mostly takes place on land inhabited by “traditional” communities, governed by a combination of state and customary law and governance institutions. Mining companies often treat traditional leaders as the representatives of such communities, with the power to make decisions regarding communal lands. Over time, chiefs have become active mining agents, concluding deals with (foreign) mining companies ostensibly on behalf of their communities. Such mining deals are the object of heavy contestation, with ‘mine-hosting’ communities pitted against senior traditional leaders, large-scale mining companies and politicians. At the core of these contestations are issues of representation and decision-making power in traditional communities. Recent laws centralize control over mineral income into the hands of small elite of politicians, wealthy businessmen and chiefs, and facilitate the ‘corporatization of chieftaincy’. This legal framework itself is an object of fierce contestation in both legislative and judicial arenas, with the government, the traditional leadership lobby and mining companies all invested in sustaining as much uncertainty as possible regarding land rights of customary landholders. The deliberately reconstituted ambiguity around rural land rights and powers of authority provides an important context for understanding processes of extraversion and struggles over mining at the community level.

Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the extraction of rosewood, an Indigenous tree species to the forests in Southwestern Zambia. By centring the resource in the ethnography I analyse the impacts of its extraction on its value and the relations it brings about between heterogenous actors in past, present and future.

Paper long abstract:

Despite conservation efforts Zambia is experiencing rising deforestation. Especially the forests in its Western Province have increasingly become the target of foreign logging companies in recent years. One tree species in particular is in demand. Rosewood is of great value in East Asian markets and refers to a group of hardwood species with a red colour which are mainly used for the production of luxury furniture. In order to meet the rising demand for rosewood furniture by China’s elite and middle class, logging companies started to exploit Zambia’s forests (among others) seeking red-coloured hardwood. I aim to investigate current and past conservation strategies simultaneously to extraction patterns to identify processes that lead to changing knowledge-practices and changing values of rosewood. How did the value attributed to the tree species changed over time and space and which implications has the logging and the enormous increase in commercial value for local knowledges, uses, and value-making of the resource in the rural areas near the forests of Zambia’s Western Province? Rosewood has a different meaning, different value and a different history for those who harvest rosewood for the purposes of furniture production and for those who live with and from the tree. Moving along the ‘biographies’ of trees allows us to understand how they are valued and perceived in contextually specific ways influenced by specific processes of extraction, exchange, or protection. This paper examines the multiplicity of relations that the extraction of rosewood produces between heterogenous identities with diverse positionalities and histories.

Paper short abstract:

Scrap metal exports from Ghana have grown in recent years both in terms of value and volume. In the context of mounting metal demand, scrap waste is a resource frontier. Does it fall into the traps of extraversion associated with the continent?

Paper long abstract:

Africa has been associated with extractive economies of metals found in its geological formations. Less appreciated is the continent’s presence in global markets of secondary metal resources - that means metals recycled from automobile, electronic, industrial or other waste. Yet, a glance at the trade data for Ghana, which is the context for this paper, shows that annual values of scrap metal exports are significant and voluminous. What is then the political economy of the lesser appreciated ‘secondary resources’, especially as African cities bustle with second-hand markets and metal supply in the global markets falls short of the demand putting additional pressure on scrap metal to mend the gap? The paper builds on an ethnographic work in Ghana’s scrapyards and with international metal brokers. The paper traces histories of global scrap supply chains as created by West African entrepreneurs from Ghana outwards. These supply chains are recent, emerged outside state engagement, have been constituted by networks of religious and ethnic ‘brothers’, allowed for wealth accumulation among Ghana’s marginalised communities, and globalised through partnerships with Asian and Middle Eastern entrepreneurs. I focus on scrap dealers' struggles to create an incorporative economy (creating livelihoods for people in need) based on an open resource (waste) and parity between actors (business partnerships) in a global economy premised on post-colonial legacies and volatile metal prices. The paper traces these themes with reference to a series of protests organised by scrap dealers in 2019 against metal buying companies.

Paper short abstract:

At Tanzania’s first uranium mine, local claim-making efforts highlight African vernacular struggles to reimagine extractive economies. Recovering stories of African uranium mining outside other than the infamous and illicit can contribute to reconceptualizing Africa’s relation to the nuclear world.

Paper long abstract:

Recovering stories of African uranium mining outside the cases of the infamous, imagined, and illicit can contribute to reconceptualizing Africa’s relation to the nuclear world. At Tanzania’s first uranium mine, persistent delays leave the project and its neighbours in limbo. This paper examines Tanzania’s uranium mining industry, based on 15 months of ethnographic and archival fieldwork. From the archives of colonial and post-independence Tanzania, the Selous Sedimentary Basin materializes as a target of mineral exploration. Oral histories of those whose ancestors were evicted from what would become the mining concession link geological exploration and global commodity markets with local histories. This geological and colonial history is the context for two contemporary claims on mining company resources: of unlawful dispossession and of environmental pollution. This paper considers these local efforts to make financial claims on the mining company. Rather than examine these deployments of the past and present through the frame of dependency, this paper considers how this extraversion enacts new kinds of politics. Amidst the opacity of contemporary delays in commercial extraction, the ubiquitous and extraordinary mineral emerges from rural Tanzania, bringing with it a possibility to reorganize, or reappropriate an economically unfair world. While Tanzania waits for the development of this large-scale extraction project, speculation and suspicion define local understandings of the role of the mine in the country’s ecology and economy. Examining local claim-making efforts invites us to move beyond critiques of ongoing (neo)colonial encounters with global commodities, to consider African vernacular struggles to reinvent the nuclear world.