The Anthropology of Resource Extraction. An Introduction

In the recent decades, anthropological studies to understanding the multiple social, political, economic, cosmological and environmental dynamics associated with resource extraction have expanded significantly along with the most recent commodity super-cycles and related mining booms and busts. This introduction discusses, first of all, the anthropological perspective taken in these studies; a perspective that is crucial to grasp the full complexities of how this truly global phenomenon becomes embedded in tangible environments and both shapes and is shaped by a plurality of actors. Subsequently, following a brief reflection on how we approach resource extraction as an object of analysis, attention is drawn to a number of literature reviews, as well as various editorial publications that have focused on specific themes, regions, mining activities, or minerals. This serves to outline the heterogeneity of interests of anthropologists of resource extraction and to explain our volume’s rationale in relation to this heterogeneity. Ultimately this introduction sets the stage for this volume´s main aim, which is to consolidate this growing body of work into a coherent field of anthropological inquiry and to sketch the contours of what we understand as the ‘The Anthropology of Resource Extraction’.