‘Working for the stomach’: sustaining peasant mining in south-western Uganda

In the mountainous areas of south-western Uganda, peasant miners are characterized as people who ‘work for the stomach’ and pursue an unsustainable activity: extracting alluvial gold with artisanal technology. After days of hard work in the mines, they allegedly squander their money on alcohol and sex. A common way of disapproving of these miners’ behaviour is to compare them to lake fishers (ababariya). By focusing on the ababariya narrative as an entry point into the lifeways of miners, and the relationship between mining and fishing and agriculture, we explore how peasant miners think about a sustainable life. Our argument is that the ababariya can be instrumental in the reproduction and legitimization of existing social and economic inequalities. We therefore examine the contexts that frame the ababariya narrative and the inequalities that it legitimizes. This leads us to reflect on whether this narrative on ‘excessive behaviours’ reveals something about an alternative way of thinking about economy and social relationships based on abundance rather than scarcity.