Shifting Livelihoods: Gold Mining and Subsistence in the Chocó, Colombia

by Daniel Tubb, K. Sivaramakrishnan (Foreword by), K. Sivaramakrishnan (Editor)

Overview

Honorable Mention for the Society for the Anthropology of Work (SAW) Book Prize

The many dimensions of gold in a shadow economy

People employ various methods to extract gold in the rainforests of the Chocó, in northwest Colombia: Rural Afro-Colombian artisanal miners work hillsides with hand tools or dredge mud from river bottoms. Migrant miners level the landscape with excavators, then trap gold with mercury. Canadian mining companies prospect for open-pit mega-mines. Drug traffickers launder cocaine profits by smuggling gold into Colombia and claiming it came from fictitious small-scale mines.

Through an ethnography of gold that examines the movement of people, commodities, and capital, Shifting Livelihoods investigates how resource extraction reshapes a place. In the Chocó, gold enables forms of “shift” (rebusque)—a metaphor for the fluid livelihood strategy adopted by forest dwellers and migrant gold miners alike as they seek informal work amid a drug war. Mining’s effects on rural people, corporations, and politics are on view in this fine-grained account of daily life in a regional economy dominated by gold and cocaine.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780295747538
Publisher:	University of Washington Press
Publication date:	06/30/2020
Series:	Culture, Place, and Nature
Pages:	250
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Daniel Tubb is associate professor of anthropology at the University of New Brunswick Fredericton.

Table of Contents

Foreword K. Sivaramakrishnan xi

Preface xv

Acknowledgments xxv

Maps of Colombia and the Chocó xxix

Introduction: Life during a Gold Rush 3

Part I Production: Subsistence and the Dual Household Economy

Chapter 1 Gold and the Household Economy 39

Chapter 2 Gold and the Cash Economy 64

Part II Accumulation: Rebusque and the Cash Economy

Chapter 3 Family Mines and Small-Scale Mining 85

Chapter 4 Rebusque on the Precarious Periphery 104

Part III Transformation: Money Laundering and Speculation

Chapter 5 Simulated Extraction and Gold-Based Money Laundering 133

Chapter 6 Speculative Projects and Multinational Mines 149

Conclusion: Life after a Gold Rush 172

Notes 183

Bibliography 195

Index 209

What People are Saying About This

Marjo de Thieje

An important, accessible, beautifully written book. . . . Tubb looks at the highly significant issue of extraction from multiple angles and places it in thinkable economic, social, and cultural contexts.

María Clemencia Ramírez

"Through the prism of the miners, their families, and their communities, Tubb provides a nuanced, complex analysis of the concept of rebusque."

María Clemencia Ramírez

Through the prism of the miners, their families, and their communities, Tubb provides a nuanced, complex analysis of the concept of rebusque.

Marjo de Theije

"An important, accessible, beautifully written book. . . . Tubb looks at the highly significant issue of extraction from multiple angles and places it in thinkable economic, social, and cultural contexts."

Editorial Reviews

"[O]ffers an engaging, complex account focused on issues concerning the production, accumulation, and transformation of value."

Choice

"Tubb astutely examines the economics of artisal mining in the Choco area, adeptly shifting from the macro to the micro, the global to the local, whilst telling a captivating and compelling story."

Nokoko

"This is an exciting time for the anthropological study of mining, and Shifting Livelihoods makes a welcome contribution to the scholarship that is emerging."

Exertions

"[A] rich and detailed ethnography."

American Anthropologist

"This ethnography is an eloquently written and concise read for multiple audiences interested in discussions about economic anthropology and the anthropology of mining... Shifting Livelihoods is a respectful walk alongside miners in Colombia’s Chocó region that manages to capture their humanity and dignity – something that journalists and politicians have failed heretofore to do."

Anthropologica