Shifting Livelihoods
eBook - ePub
Available until 23 Dec |Learn more

Shifting Livelihoods

Gold Mining and Subsistence in the Chocó, Colombia

  1. 250 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub
Available until 23 Dec |Learn more

Shifting Livelihoods

Gold Mining and Subsistence in the Chocó, Colombia

About this book

Honorable Mention for the Society for the Anthropology of Work (SAW) Book Prize The many dimensions of gold in a shadow economy People employ various methods to extract gold in the rainforests of the Chocó, in northwest Colombia: Rural Afro-Colombian artisanal miners work hillsides with hand tools or dredge mud from river bottoms. Migrant miners level the landscape with excavators, then trap gold with mercury. Canadian mining companies prospect for open-pit mega-mines. Drug traffickers launder cocaine profits by smuggling gold into Colombia and claiming it came from fictitious small-scale mines. Through an ethnography of gold that examines the movement of people, commodities, and capital, Shifting Livelihoods investigates how resource extraction reshapes a place. In the Chocó, gold enables forms of "shift" ( rebusque )—a metaphor for the fluid livelihood strategy adopted by forest dwellers and migrant gold miners alike as they seek informal work amid a drug war. Mining's effects on rural people, corporations, and politics are on view in this fine-grained account of daily life in a regional economy dominated by gold and cocaine.

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Yes, you can access Shifting Livelihoods by Daniel Tubb, K. Sivaramakrishnan in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Social Sciences & Latin American & Caribbean History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Series Page
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Dedication
  6. Epigraph
  7. Contents
  8. Foreword by K. Sivaramakrishnan
  9. Preface
  10. Acknowledgments
  11. Maps of Colombia and the Chocó
  12. Introduction: Life during a Gold Rush
  13. Part I: Production: Subsistence and the Dual Household Economy
  14. Part II: Accumulation: Rebusque and the Cash Economy
  15. Part III: Transformation: Money Laundering and Speculation
  16. Conclusion: Life after a Gold Rush
  17. Notes
  18. Bibliography
  19. Index
  20. Series List