Mining towns, enclaves, and spaces: A genealogy of worker camps in the Congolese copperbelt

[en] At the dawn of the recent mining boom, James Ferguson has forcefully argued that new investors in Africa develop a new capital-intensive mode of production within securitized enclaves, breaking with the tradition of providing housing and social infrastructure to workers characteristic of large corporations in the 20th century. This article aims to provide a more detailed analysis of changes in mining companies' spatial government practices by retracing the genealogy of workers' camps in the Congolese copperbelt from the early 20th century to the present day. Based on archival and ethnographic research, the article draws attention to transformations in the camps' architecture and the political rationalities underlying them. What this historical exploration shows is less the emergence of a new spatial government reflecting the globalization of neoliberal capitalism than a series of gradual changes over a century that result from the adaptation of mining companies to local constraints and correspond to the development, or re-organization, of various power strategies.

Disciplines :

Anthropology

Author, co-author :

Rubbers, Benjamin ; Université de Liège - ULiège > Département des sciences sociales > Labo d'anthropologie sociale et culturelle (LASC)

Language :

English

Title :

Mining towns, enclaves, and spaces: A genealogy of worker camps in the Congolese copperbelt

Publication date :

2018

Journal title :

Geoforum

ISSN :

0016-7185

eISSN :

1872-9398

Publisher :

Elsevier, United Kingdom

Peer reviewed :

Peer Reviewed verified by ORBi

European Projects :

H2020 - 646802 - WORKINMINING - Reinventing paternalism. The micropolitics of work in the mining companies of Central Africa

Funders :

CE - Commission Européenne [BE]

Available on ORBi :

since 09 January 2019

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