Gold mining and new regulations of (sub)national spaces in Africa (B06)

• Subject Area: African, American and Oceania Studies
• Term: from 2016 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 266371360

The growing demand for gold, resulting from the recent global financial crisis, has led actors to engage with new spatial formats and to transform the spatial order in gold-producing countries as they adjust to new market conditions. Extractive enclaves compete with other spatial formats such as chiefdoms, nation states, and transnational organizations. We hypothesize that the power of African actors to powerfully shape this process and regulate the globally organized capital has increased. They act in varied ways by mobilizing globally circulating ideas concerning development, resource management, and rights; strategically networking with transnationally active organizations; or resorting to violence on the ground. This anthropological project comparatively studies these processes in Mali and Burkina Faso.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 1199: Processes of Spatialization under the Global Condition
• Applicant Institution: Universität Leipzig
• Project Head: Professorin Dr. Katja Werthmann