Lives of Extraction : Identities, Communities and the Politics of Place

The frontiers of extraction are expanding rapidly, driven by a growing demand for minerals and metals that is often motivated by sustainability considerations. Two volumes of International Development Policy are dedicated to the paradoxes and futures of green extractivism, with analyses of experiences from five continents. In this, the first of these two volumes, 16 authors offer a critical and nuanced understanding of the social, cultural and political dimensions of extraction. The experiences of communities, indigenous peoples and workers in extractive contexts are deeply shaped by narratives, imaginaries and the complexity of social contexts. These dimensions are crucial to making extraction possible and to sustaining its expansion, but also to identifying possibilities for resistance, and to paving the way for alternative, post-extractive economies.

This volume is accompanied by IDP 16, The Afterlives of Extraction: Alternatives and Sustainable Futures.

Filipe Calvão is an economic and environmental anthropologist. He is an associate professor at the Geneva Graduate Institute. His research examines the politics, ecologies and economies of mineral extraction, with a current focus on the nexus between digitalization, work and extractivism.
Matthew Archer studies corporate sustainability, sustainable finance and sustainable development through the lens of political ecology and environmental anthropology. He is currently a lecturer in sustainability in the Department of Environment and Geography at the University of York.
Asanda Benya is a labour sociologist based at the University of Cape Town. She works at the intersection of gender, class and race. She researches the extractives industries, gendered workplace subjectivities, labour and feminist movements.