Presentation short abstract

Based on ethnographic research in Ghana, we examine how people resist the harms of gold mining. We argue resistance and care are co-constituted and entangled with geologic and socio-technical conditions. We suggest ways researchers can enact feminist environmentalisms in extractive landscapes.

Presentation long abstract

Ghana has become Africa’s leading producer of gold through proliferation of artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM). While ASGM offers income, livelihood, and pride among miners, the unregulated and highly mobile nature of mining makes various aspects of production – employment, contaminant use, gold quantity extracted – difficult to assess. While lack of regulation directly benefits elites and political parties, ASGM is profoundly destructive to land-use, food security and human and ecosystem health. ASGM has become a significant source of environmental injustice, in Ghana and globally. Based on fifteen years of ethnographic research across various sites in Ghana, this paper examines myriad forms of resistance to ASGM’s deleterious, exploitative dimensions. Drawing from feminist theory and political geographies of the subsoil, we examine gendered everyday forms of resistance that emerge in ASGM sites. From collaborative miners who savvily underreport production, to grandmothers who create farm protection patrols, to young women who organize collective care to reduce children’s contamination exposure— Ghanaians strategically navigate ASGM and its socio-environmental implications. We argue that agency, care, and resistance are co-constituted, multi-dimensional, and shaped by intersecting geo-environmental and socio-technical factors. Finally, this paper explores how political ecologists can practice research that supports local people on their terms, including everyday forms of resistance described in the paper. We ask, how can researchers enact feminist environmentalisms with and for local people in extractive landscapes?