Gnawing away at the City:  narratives of domestic precarity in a Congolese mining town

Geenen, Kristien

doi:10.1017/asr.2020.65

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Gnawing away at the City: narratives of domestic precarity in a Congolese mining town

Geenen, Kristien

2020 • In African Studies Review

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https://hdl.handle.net/2268/250173

DOI
10.1017/asr.2020.65

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Keywords :

mining town; urban planning; artisanal mining; DR Congo; Kolwezi

Abstract :

[en] The relation between urbanization and mining is a precarious one, the latter often expands at the expense of the former. The incautious urban planning of a mining city in southeastern DR Congo, however, opens up opportunities to residents with artisanal mining skills. The city being constructed above mineral deposits, they dig ore in their backyards to draw their subsistence. Based upon archival and ethnographic research, the author argues that, by self-generating the livelihoods they expected their resource-rich soil to bring forth, these artisanal diggers take advantage of the urbanized mineral deposits and write their own narrative of capitalism.

Disciplines :

History
Anthropology

Author, co-author :

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

Language :

English

Title :

Gnawing away at the City: narratives of domestic precarity in a Congolese mining town

Publication date :

2020

Journal title :

African Studies Review

ISSN :

0002-0206

Publisher :

Cambridge University Press, 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 :

EC - European Commission

Available on ORBi :

since 19 August 2020

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