Shelf Projects: The Political Life of Exploration Geology in Senegal

Abstract

Since the early 2000s, southeastern Senegal has emerged as a premier gold exploration and mining frontier. At present, the Sabodala gold mine, owned by the Canadian company Teranga Gold, is the only operational gold mine and mill in Senegal. But two more open-pit gold operations are scheduled to open this year, and several other companies have announced discoveries of industrial-scale deposits. By documenting the shifting ownership and exploration of the Sabodala deposit, this article draws attention to how the protracted phase of mineral research shapes the political life of mining operations in Africa and elsewhere in the global South. Geological exploration in colonial and post-colonial Senegal, as in much of Africa, has relied heavily on the expertise of indigenous miners and smelters. Mining Sabodala has thus unearthed multi-vocal and contested histories of gold discovery. Historians of science have established that field assistants and experts in Africa have produced agronomic and medical knowledge typically credited to "the West." By extending this argument to gold exploration, the article brings African history into dialogue with an emergent anthropology of subterranean knowledge production.

Disturbed Earth: Conceptions of the Deep Underground in Shale Extraction Deliberations in the US and UK

“…Drawing on Tsing, Lydon describes a resource frontier as both a 'transactional space' linking people and resources and as a focal point for analysing how activities in that space may generate wealth and revitalisation as well as destruction, exploitation and in-justice (Lydon, 2015). When presented as a mode of 'discovery ' (d'Avignon, 2018) or when coupled with the commodification of previously shared or untitled land, production along resource frontiers has This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted following peer review for publication in Environmental Values 28(6): 641-663 [2019]. The publisher-authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.3197/096327119X15579936382482 been characterised by conflict, disruption and disregard for regulatory authorities (Nugent, 2003).…”