Mining, Ecologies, Gender

Mining has always prompted discussions about resource extraction, use, and sustainability. In recent times, the rapidly increasing demand for low-impact metals impelled scholars to seek out new ways to conceptualize questions of human impact on the natural world. This roundtable seeks to contribute to this conversation by bridging seemingly separate mining traditions across different temporal and spatial contexts. Bringing together scholars and activists, the event explores human-nature interactions in early modern Europe, colonial and postcolonial West Africa, and current-day Amazonia. Each contribution will reflect on how focusing on indigenous and local mining tradition intersects with and is challenged by past and current ideas about sustainability, cultural stereotypes about the gendered nature of mining labor, and the incumbent need to build connection between humanities and natural sciences.

Key topics for discussion include (but are not be limited to): the historical transition from ritual practices of mining rooted in cosmologies of the Earth and minerals to illegal artisanal activities driven by global demand for “critical” metals; the intersection of gender and mining, particularly in relation to cultural perception of the Earth as a generative mother; the developments of new methodologies in history, natural sciences, and activism to recover Indigenous knowledge and propose localized solutions in response to the growing demand for “rare” minerals.

The roundtable seeks to foster interdisciplinary collaboration between the humanities and natural sciences, focusing on paths to human-nature relationship that have been forgotten and not taken, but may have essential lessons for environmental and human survival.

• Jennifer Angel-Amaya, Graduate Student in Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University
• Robyn d’Avignon, Associate Professor of History at New York University
• Gabriele Marcon, Senior Postdoctoral Fellow in Social and Economic History at the University of Vienna and Visiting Scholar at the Center for Science and Society
• Moderated by Pamela Smith, Seth Low Professor of History and Founding Director of the Center for Science and Society at Columbia University

Free and open to the public; registration required. Contact [email protected] with any questions.

Hosted by the Center for Science and Society.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Fayerweather Hall, Room 513, 1180 Amsterdam Avenue, New York, United States