Comments on: Reflections on 30 tons an ounce

By: antropologi.info - Social and cultural anthropology in the news blog

antropologi.info - Social and cultural anthropology in the news blog — Mon, 07 Nov 2005 18:02:03 +0000

[…] A recent post by Alex Golub on Savage Minds is interesting for several reasons: Even a scientific project on a very narrow topic might suddenly be relevant for a wider audience. Golub has studied the relationship between indigenous people in Papua New Guinea and the white senior management of a gold mine. He writes: I’ve been really amazed to see the New York Times’s series on the impact of gold mining that has been running recently—suddenly my area of expertise is literally news. […]

By: antropologi.info - Social and cultural anthropology in the news blog - Fieldwork in Papua New Guinea: Who are the exotic others?

Sun, 06 Nov 2005 17:31:30 +0000

By: antropologi.info - anthropology in the news (new)

antropologi.info - anthropology in the news (new) — Sun, 06 Nov 2005 17:31:11 +0000

Fieldwork in Papua New Guinea: Who are the exotic others?

A recent post by Alex Golub on Savage Minds is interesting for several reasons: Even a scientific project on a very narrow topic might suddenly be relevant for a wider audience. Golub has studied the relationship between indigenous people in Papua New …

By: orange.

orange. — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 21:11:52 +0000

Tad said, “They didn’t have a choice, but.”

cool. After having posted my comment I quickly came to think I should have formulated it rather like DO they have a choice.

By: Tad

Tad — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 19:12:56 +0000

In response to Orange, they didn’t have a choice, but political tactics ranging from protests at blockades to negotiation and partnership agreements suggest to me an active involvement in managing local lands and resources. Despite the fact there is no aboriginal treaty in the area, aboriginal people have a lot of clout and are listened to.

Briefly to the question of wage work prior to mining … fur trading, big game guiding, various infrastructure construction projects like building a telegraph line to Alaska in the 1860s. But, wage earning opportunities have come along relatively recently in northwestern BC.

By: orange.

orange. — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 08:57:29 +0000

.. or, to pose my question another way round: Did they have a choice ?

By: orange.

orange. — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 08:50:14 +0000

Tad said, “Many Tahltan people earn good wages working in all sorts of areas in mine operations. And the mine contributes directly to community projects with cash and in-kind contributions.”

Now I m asking myself, what kind of work did the Tahltan people do before the mining company came into their area and how has Tahltan living changed since then for example in regards of adoption of daily-life artefacts or in regards of the use of money as a means of payment in general.
You re surely right in setting a questionmark behind terms of “the bad’n exploitive companies” and I agree “good & bad guy thinking” does not fit to anthro grounds, but ain’t affords like described above rather to be seen as a helping hand to assimilate to western civilization?

By: orange.

orange. — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 08:30:39 +0000

Thank you for this thought-ewoking post, Rex. I actually was not aware of all the metal around me.
Wheres your interest in Melanesia rooted?

By: Kerim

Kerim — Sat, 05 Nov 2005 04:11:23 +0000

Coal mining in China is one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. Salt too is largely derived from mining, especially non-edible salt like what we put on the roads in the winter.

By: Rex

Rex — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 07:54:51 +0000

In my experience mining executives do not stay at any one property for more than a couple of years, and I think there is a sort of diasporic ‘industry culture’ which has a certain set of buzzwords and ideas: ‘sustainable develoment’ for instance, ‘best practices’ and ‘stakeholder involvement’ etc. etc. International conferences ensure that the details of benefits packages for local people in one place get spread around and tried out in other mines as well. Of course, the idea of companies ‘being good neighbors’ with local populations goes back 150 years or so, so the idea of providing college scholarships to poor Indian kids is not exactly a new idea.

Of course, how these general ideas are saturated with the particularity of any particular place where they’re located is another issue altogether. So yes, I think mines (like everything else) get localized. But they have higher-level connections to an international culture which often sets the terms within which management is willing to work.

By: Tad

Tad — Fri, 04 Nov 2005 04:05:02 +0000

Rex … the relationships between mine owners and aboriginal workers is fascinating to me. There is a large gold mine near the Tahltan-speaking village where I do my fieldwork in northwestern British Columbia. An anthropologist who worked in the village in the 1970s argued that mining activities through the early parts of the 1900s provided little to native people, whether in terms of profits or jobs. I saw a marked shift from her observations by 2002 when I conducted my fieldwork. Many Tahltan people earn good wages working in all sorts of areas in mine operations. And the mine contributes directly to community projects with cash and in-kind contributions.

There are tensions around resource development in nrothern BC, to be sure, but to what extent do you find that the political climate of the country in which the mine is located determines the tenor of the relationship between mine execs and (aboriginal) labourers? I sense that local politics play a profound role … to the extent that the policies regarding native people of individual mining companies, with mines throughout the world, must vary as widely as their international operations.

By: Critical World Blog

Critical World Blog — Mon, 30 Nov -0001 00:00:00 +0000

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