IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/gig/afjour/v49y2014i2p3-26.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Work and Masculinity in Katanga’s Artisanal Mines

Author

Listed:
  • Jeroen Cuvelier

Abstract

This article, based on 16 months of anthropological fieldwork between 2005 and 2012, examines the relationship between work and masculinity among artisanal miners, or creuseurs, in Katanga, the southeastern province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It argues that men’s involvement in artisanal mining should be considered not only as an economic survival strategy but also as an attempt to experiment with new ways of being a man in a context of economic crisis and changing gender relations. Furthermore, the article criticizes the tendency to downplay or underestimate the complexity and diversity of processes of masculine identity construction in Africa’s artisanal-mining areas. In order to do justice to the intricacy of these processes, the article proposes using concepts and insights from the field of masculinity studies and distinguishing between a levelling and a differentiating trend in artisanal miners’ masculinity practices.

Suggested Citation

  • Jeroen Cuvelier, 2014. "Work and Masculinity in Katanga’s Artisanal Mines," Africa Spectrum, Institute of African Affairs, GIGA German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg, vol. 49(2), pages 3-26.
    • Handle: RePEc:gig:afjour:v:49:y:2014:i:2:p:3-26
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://journals.sub.uni-hamburg.de/giga/afsp/article/view/752
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. World Bank, 2008. "Democratic Republic of Congo : Growth with Governance in the Mining Sector," World Bank Publications - Reports 8072, The World Bank Group.
    2. Roy Maconachie & Gavin Hilson, 2011. "Artisanal Gold Mining: A New Frontier in Post-Conflict Sierra Leone?," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 47(4), pages 595-616.
    3. Erik Kennes, 2002. "Footnotes to the mining story," Review of African Political Economy, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(93-94), pages 601-606, September.
    4. Gavin Hilson & Mark Hirons & Gavin Hilson, 2011. "Artisanal Mining, Smallholder Farming And Livelihood Diversification In Rural Sub‐Saharan Africa: An Introduction," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(8), pages 1031-1041, November.
    5. Bryceson, Deborah Fahy & Jønsson, Jesper Bosse, 2010. "Gold Digging Careers in Rural East Africa: Small-Scale Miners' Livelihood Choices," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 379-392, March.
    6. Geenen, Sara, 2014. "Dispossession, displacement and resistance: Artisanal miners in a gold concession in South-Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 90-99.
    7. Filip De Boeck, 1998. "Domesticating Diamonds and Dollars: Identity, Expenditure and Sharing in Southwestern Zaire (1984–1997)," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 29(4), pages 777-810, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Anni Orola & Anna Härri & Jarkko Levänen & Ville Uusitalo & Stig Irving Olsen, 2022. "Assessing WELBY Social Life Cycle Assessment Approach through Cobalt Mining Case Study," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(18), pages 1-26, September.
    2. Werthmann, Katja, 2017. "The drawbacks of privatization: Artisanal gold mining in Burkina Faso 1986–2016," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 418-426.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Verbrugge, Boris & Besmanos, Beverly, 2016. "Formalizing artisanal and small-scale mining: Whither the workforce?," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(C), pages 134-141.
    2. Geenen, Sara, 2014. "Dispossession, displacement and resistance: Artisanal miners in a gold concession in South-Kivu, Democratic Republic of Congo," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(C), pages 90-99.
    3. De Jong, Terah U. & Sauerwein, Titus, 2021. "State-owned minerals, village-owned land: How a shared property rights framework helped formalize artisanal diamond miners in Côte d’Ivoire between 1986 and 2016," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    4. Kilosho Buraye, Janvier & Stoop, Nik & Verpoorten, Marijke, 2017. "Defusing the social minefield of gold sites in Kamituga, South Kivu. From legal pluralism to the re-making of institutions?," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 356-368.
    5. Hilson, Gavin & Hilson, Abigail & Maconachie, Roy, 2018. "Opportunity or necessity? Conceptualizing entrepreneurship at African small-scale mines," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 131(C), pages 286-302.
    6. Geenen, Sara & Stoop, Nik & Verpoorten, Marijke, 2021. "How much do artisanal miners earn? An inquiry among Congolese gold miners," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    7. Janvier Kilosho & Nik Stoop & Marijke Verpoorten, 2015. "The social minefield of gold digging in South-Kivu, DRC: the case of Kamituga," Working Papers of LICOS - Centre for Institutions and Economic Performance 490889, KU Leuven, Faculty of Economics and Business (FEB), LICOS - Centre for Institutions and Economic Performance.
    8. Maclin, Beth J. & Kelly, Jocelyn T.D. & Perks, Rachel & Vinck, Patrick & Pham, Phuong, 2017. "Moving to the mines: Motivations of men and women for migration to artisanal and small-scale mining sites in Eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 115-122.
    9. Damonte, Gerardo, 2021. "Limited state governance and institutional hybridization in alluvial ASM in Peru," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 72(C).
    10. Martinez, Gerardo & Smith, Nicole M. & Malone, Aaron, 2021. "Formalization is just the beginning: Analyzing post-formalization successes and challenges in Peru's small-scale gold mining sector," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 74(C).
    11. Stoop, Nik & Verpoorten, Marijke & van der Windt, Peter, 2019. "Artisanal or industrial conflict minerals? Evidence from Eastern Congo," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 660-674.
    12. Pokorny, Benno & von Lübke, Christian & Dayamba, Sidzabda Djibril & Dickow, Helga, 2019. "All the gold for nothing? Impacts of mining on rural livelihoods in Northern Burkina Faso," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 119(C), pages 23-39.
    13. Julia Rotter & Peppi-Emilia Airike & Cecilia Mark-Herbert, 2014. "Exploring Political Corporate Social Responsibility in Global Supply Chains," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 125(4), pages 581-599, December.
    14. Baffour-Kyei, Vasco & Mensah, Amos & Owusu, Victor & Horlu, Godwin S.A.K., 2021. "Artisanal small-scale mining and livelihood assets in rural southern Ghana," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    15. Poignant, Adrian, 2023. "Small-scale mining and agriculture: Evidence from northwestern Tanzania," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    16. Kotsadam, Andreas & Tolonen, Anja, 2016. "African Mining, Gender, and Local Employment," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 83(C), pages 325-339.
    17. Tomas Frederiksen, 2016. "Corporate social responsibility and political settlements in the mining sector in Ghana, Zambia and Peru," Global Development Institute Working Paper Series esid-074-16, GDI, The University of Manchester.
    18. Perks, Rachel, 2012. "How can public–private partnerships contribute to security and human rights policy and practice in the extractive industries? A case study of The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(2), pages 251-260.
    19. Schütte, Philip & Näher, Uwe, 2020. "Tantalum supply from artisanal and small-scale mining: A mineral economic evaluation of coltan production and trade dynamics in Africa's Great Lakes region," Resources Policy, Elsevier, vol. 69(C).
    20. Rodriguez, Luz A. & Velez, María Alejandra & Pfaff, Alexander, 2021. "Leaders’ distributional & efficiency effects in collective responses to policy: Lab-in-field experiments with small-scale gold miners in Colombia," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:gig:afjour:v:49:y:2014:i:2:p:3-26. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Andreas Mehler (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/dueiide.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.