Papers by Hannelore Verbrugge
From the introduction:
In May 2013, the Australian-South African International Mining for Develo... more From the introduction:
In May 2013, the Australian-South African International Mining for Development Centre (IM4DC) organized an African Women in Mining and Development study tour. This initiative was not the first nor the only one of its kind, and the past decade witnessed a growing interest in the role of women in large-scale (LSM) and, especially, artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) on the world’s mining hotspots, such as South Africa, Australia, Ghana, or Papua New Guinea. This suggests that international development initiatives only recently noticed the important role women play in mining.
The reason for this may be the heroic image of muscled miners armed with headlights and pneumatic drills, covered in sweat and dust, which dominates the Western imagination when it comes to mining (see Lahiri-Dutt, this volume). This image is, no doubt, a recent product. Reforms in nineteenth-century industrializing Europe were geared towards domesticating, in every literal sense, working-class women active in mining and in heavy industry, such as textile mills. Yet, it partly explains why in popular representations and in development initiatives until recently there was no place for female miners, except in their derived capacities as worrying mothers, wives or girlfriends, or as “poor, powerless, and invariably pregnant, burdened with lots of children, or carrying one load or another on her back or head” (Win 2007: 79).
This skewed image ...
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Development and Change, 2014
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Book Chapters by Hannelore Verbrugge
Routledge, Oct 4, 2013
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This chapter presents an anthropological case-study that focuses on the artisanal and small-scale... more This chapter presents an anthropological case-study that focuses on the artisanal and small-scale gold mines in Makongolosi, a small mining town in Mbeya Region, south-west Tanzania. Starting from the observation that most studies on mining are male-centred, this chapter argues that evolutions at the international level, together with institutional and technological changes, exert a different impact on women and men. To do so, it concentrates on women miners’ day-to-day activities, and investigates how these recent changes affected gender relationships in and around the mines. The analysis, however, shies away from easy generalizations: any analysis must take into account the agency and various strategies deployed by women miners, but also the particularities of the local context they find themselves in.
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Conference Presentations by Hannelore Verbrugge
In many African countries, women make up large parts of the workforce in artisanal and small-scal... more In many African countries, women make up large parts of the workforce in artisanal and small-scale mining communities (ASM). They carry out activities ranging from providing tertiary services (selling drinks, food, and sex) to unearthing gold ores and participating in the gold trade. While women remained largely invisible to academics, NGOs and states in the past, recent feminist publications and development programmes have increased the visibility of women and gender in mining (e.g. ‘the Feminisation of mining’, Lahiri-Dutt, 2015). Many aid programmes, however, often lump together women and mining into one homogenising category, highlighting women’s vulnerability. Rather than putting victimcy ahead of agency and contributing to an NGO-isation of the mining discourse whereby “regulation” is put forward as a panacea to gender inequality (regulation of both the public and private sphere), this paper highlights how female miners take advantage of the blurred contours of the mining space to manage the unpredictable, varied and potentially dangerous conditions of everyday life in the mine.
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In present-day Tanzania women make up almost half of the workforce. Nowadays they carry out activ... more In present-day Tanzania women make up almost half of the workforce. Nowadays they carry out activities ranging from providing tertiary services (selling drinks, food, and sex) to unearthing gold ores and participating in the gold trade while, in the past, they were not welcome on the mining sites. Some women also possess formal mineral titles themselves. Most of them have inherited their mining titles and they alone are in charge of their households. This chapter presents an anthropological analysis of these female mining concession holders, for whom a crucial element is the fact that they manage (and manage well) without a husband in negotiating the male-dominated, small-scale mining sector in Tanzania. This negotiation is an ongoing process characterized by speculation, insecurity and social contingency that affects women’s identities and alters gender relations and the mining landscape at large. However, women owning mining rights have received comparatively little attention. In the light of the debate over formalisation, and a rapidly changing mining sector more generally, their role and the gender inequality with which they are confronted deserves further scrutiny.
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Mining towns are characterized by a high circulation of money. So are the small-scale gold mining... more Mining towns are characterized by a high circulation of money. So are the small-scale gold mining towns in Tanzania, where the ready availability of cash attracts different groups of people. Among them are the usually young girls looking for jobs in bars, hotels and other types of drinking establishments. In addition to selling soft drinks and beers, many barmaids also provide sexual services in return for payment. Acknowledging that this is (just) one possible approach, I address this practice from an economic point of view. I argue that “selling one’s body” cannot be seen separately from or even at the margins of the economic sphere; it is entirely part of that economic world. In this paper I want to re-conceptualize the often popular interpretation of this commodification of the body by demonstrating that alongside financial profit, it can also generate other (temporary) forms of gain like intimacy, security or even power. By doing so, I hope to avoid the implicit assumptions that go with words such as prostitution and transactional sex and shed light on different aspects of the money/sex exchange.
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The Last Taboo? Auto-biographical accounts of how anthropological practice (really) works.
... more The Last Taboo? Auto-biographical accounts of how anthropological practice (really) works.
As Kirsten Bell (2014) discusses in her paper on informed consent, for anthropologists the ethics of doing fieldwork differs from the ethics of writing. In this presentation we will focus on the former while discussing some of the ethical questions we have encountered through the course of our fieldwork. The ethical guidelines for anthropologists provided by professional associations such as the AAA and ASA are quite general. This leads to confused ethics, which are rarely discussed among anthropologists and remain, in fact, one of the last taboos anthropologists face. Subsequently, questions of reciprocity, moral integrity and leaving the field ‘unspoiled’ are left for the researcher to contemplate on in her own good time.
Unlike any other social sciences, the researcher’s self is the only instrument available to the anthropologist. Ethnographic research therefore is not based on objectivity, but rather on (inter)subjectivity and face-to-face personal interactions between the researcher and her informants (Pels, 2014). The primary object of anthropological practice is this dialogical relation between subjectivities. This kind of ethnographic knowledge is not constructed in a vacuum, it is serendipitous and context-bound to the researcher, to the time and place where the research took place, to the people she met. One experiences fieldwork rather than conducts fieldwork, bodily experiences are as much part of the ethnographic data as transcribed interviews. As such ethnographic data is almost impossible to be verified, impossible to be replicated.
In this presentation we wish to discuss the everyday decisions anthropologists make with regards to ethical practices in the field. We will reflect on our own (everyday) actions as anthropologists, presenting some ethical questions we were confronted with in the duration of our fieldwork and how we dealt with it over time. These observations draw on our account as anthropologists recently returned from fieldwork, which took place between 2012 to 2014 in Tanzania and Ghana.
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Tanzania's artisanal gold mining sector is rapidly undergoing socio-economic changes prompted by ... more Tanzania's artisanal gold mining sector is rapidly undergoing socio-economic changes prompted by the recent re-introduction of gold cyanidation practices. Cyanidation (or leaching) plants are currently mushrooming around mining settlements, with operators eager to buy up miners' tailings and extract gold particles through extraction processes using cyanide. Miners see leaching plants as a positive addition to the sector because of their value-adding potential to a commodity that has previously been difficult to capitalise on. In the highly competitive rush for tailings, knowledge, experience and skills are powerful tools, and access to capital paramount. This paper presents an investigation of the organisational structures and knowledge transfer practices within operating tailings companies in Tanzania. The focus of the paper is the booming tailings industry in Chunya District, a flourishing artisanal gold processing centre in southwest Tanzania. The paper shows how plant operators must constantly balance issues of risk, trust and speculation to stay successful in the leaching industry and explores how these emerging actors are fundamentally recasting well-established networks, social dynamics and not least the environmental landscape in Tanzania's artisanal mining settlements.
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Essays by Hannelore Verbrugge
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Papers by Hannelore Verbrugge
In May 2013, the Australian-South African International Mining for Development Centre (IM4DC) organized an African Women in Mining and Development study tour. This initiative was not the first nor the only one of its kind, and the past decade witnessed a growing interest in the role of women in large-scale (LSM) and, especially, artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) on the world’s mining hotspots, such as South Africa, Australia, Ghana, or Papua New Guinea. This suggests that international development initiatives only recently noticed the important role women play in mining.
The reason for this may be the heroic image of muscled miners armed with headlights and pneumatic drills, covered in sweat and dust, which dominates the Western imagination when it comes to mining (see Lahiri-Dutt, this volume). This image is, no doubt, a recent product. Reforms in nineteenth-century industrializing Europe were geared towards domesticating, in every literal sense, working-class women active in mining and in heavy industry, such as textile mills. Yet, it partly explains why in popular representations and in development initiatives until recently there was no place for female miners, except in their derived capacities as worrying mothers, wives or girlfriends, or as “poor, powerless, and invariably pregnant, burdened with lots of children, or carrying one load or another on her back or head” (Win 2007: 79).
This skewed image ...
Book Chapters by Hannelore Verbrugge
Conference Presentations by Hannelore Verbrugge
As Kirsten Bell (2014) discusses in her paper on informed consent, for anthropologists the ethics of doing fieldwork differs from the ethics of writing. In this presentation we will focus on the former while discussing some of the ethical questions we have encountered through the course of our fieldwork. The ethical guidelines for anthropologists provided by professional associations such as the AAA and ASA are quite general. This leads to confused ethics, which are rarely discussed among anthropologists and remain, in fact, one of the last taboos anthropologists face. Subsequently, questions of reciprocity, moral integrity and leaving the field ‘unspoiled’ are left for the researcher to contemplate on in her own good time.
Unlike any other social sciences, the researcher’s self is the only instrument available to the anthropologist. Ethnographic research therefore is not based on objectivity, but rather on (inter)subjectivity and face-to-face personal interactions between the researcher and her informants (Pels, 2014). The primary object of anthropological practice is this dialogical relation between subjectivities. This kind of ethnographic knowledge is not constructed in a vacuum, it is serendipitous and context-bound to the researcher, to the time and place where the research took place, to the people she met. One experiences fieldwork rather than conducts fieldwork, bodily experiences are as much part of the ethnographic data as transcribed interviews. As such ethnographic data is almost impossible to be verified, impossible to be replicated.
In this presentation we wish to discuss the everyday decisions anthropologists make with regards to ethical practices in the field. We will reflect on our own (everyday) actions as anthropologists, presenting some ethical questions we were confronted with in the duration of our fieldwork and how we dealt with it over time. These observations draw on our account as anthropologists recently returned from fieldwork, which took place between 2012 to 2014 in Tanzania and Ghana.
Essays by Hannelore Verbrugge
In May 2013, the Australian-South African International Mining for Development Centre (IM4DC) organized an African Women in Mining and Development study tour. This initiative was not the first nor the only one of its kind, and the past decade witnessed a growing interest in the role of women in large-scale (LSM) and, especially, artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) on the world’s mining hotspots, such as South Africa, Australia, Ghana, or Papua New Guinea. This suggests that international development initiatives only recently noticed the important role women play in mining.
The reason for this may be the heroic image of muscled miners armed with headlights and pneumatic drills, covered in sweat and dust, which dominates the Western imagination when it comes to mining (see Lahiri-Dutt, this volume). This image is, no doubt, a recent product. Reforms in nineteenth-century industrializing Europe were geared towards domesticating, in every literal sense, working-class women active in mining and in heavy industry, such as textile mills. Yet, it partly explains why in popular representations and in development initiatives until recently there was no place for female miners, except in their derived capacities as worrying mothers, wives or girlfriends, or as “poor, powerless, and invariably pregnant, burdened with lots of children, or carrying one load or another on her back or head” (Win 2007: 79).
This skewed image ...
As Kirsten Bell (2014) discusses in her paper on informed consent, for anthropologists the ethics of doing fieldwork differs from the ethics of writing. In this presentation we will focus on the former while discussing some of the ethical questions we have encountered through the course of our fieldwork. The ethical guidelines for anthropologists provided by professional associations such as the AAA and ASA are quite general. This leads to confused ethics, which are rarely discussed among anthropologists and remain, in fact, one of the last taboos anthropologists face. Subsequently, questions of reciprocity, moral integrity and leaving the field ‘unspoiled’ are left for the researcher to contemplate on in her own good time.
Unlike any other social sciences, the researcher’s self is the only instrument available to the anthropologist. Ethnographic research therefore is not based on objectivity, but rather on (inter)subjectivity and face-to-face personal interactions between the researcher and her informants (Pels, 2014). The primary object of anthropological practice is this dialogical relation between subjectivities. This kind of ethnographic knowledge is not constructed in a vacuum, it is serendipitous and context-bound to the researcher, to the time and place where the research took place, to the people she met. One experiences fieldwork rather than conducts fieldwork, bodily experiences are as much part of the ethnographic data as transcribed interviews. As such ethnographic data is almost impossible to be verified, impossible to be replicated.
In this presentation we wish to discuss the everyday decisions anthropologists make with regards to ethical practices in the field. We will reflect on our own (everyday) actions as anthropologists, presenting some ethical questions we were confronted with in the duration of our fieldwork and how we dealt with it over time. These observations draw on our account as anthropologists recently returned from fieldwork, which took place between 2012 to 2014 in Tanzania and Ghana.