The anthropology of resource extraction

Abstract

In recent decades, anthropological studies of the multiple social, political, economic, cosmological, and environmental dynamics associated with resource extraction have expanded significantly. This introduction discusses, first of all, the anthropological perspective taken in these studies: a perspective that is crucial in order to grasp the full complexities of how this truly global phenomenon becomes embedded in tangible environments, both shaping and being shaped by a plurality of actors. Subsequently, following a brief reflection on how we approach resource extraction as an object of analysis, attention is drawn to a number of literature reviews, as well as various editorial publications that have focused on specific themes, regions, mining activities, or minerals. This serves to outline the heterogeneity of interests of anthropologists of resource extraction and to explain our volume’s rationale in relation to it. Ultimately this introduction sets the stage for the volume’s main aim, which is to consolidate a growing body of work into a coherent field of anthropological inquiry and to sketch the contours of what we understand as the “The Anthropology of Resource Extraction”.

Topics & Concepts