Panel 46: Resource Struggles in Africa: Languages and Strategies

This panel aims to gather analyses of social mobilization, both at the local and transnational level, taking place around extractive industries in recent times. Scholars and activists have linked the intensification of mineral extraction in many African contexts to social and political processes leading to violence and impoverishment of surrounding populations. From the notion of a “new scramble for Africa to the model of the “resource curse”, several overarching interpretative keys have been proposed to analyze underlying factors and common features of these processes.

Our proposal departs from such interpretations to the extent that we approach these phenomena through the diversity of social and political mobilization that extraction is generating. We are particularly interested in an ethnographically-informed characterization of the diverse groups involved in these processes, as well as in a comparison of the different languages and analyses that are deployed when making claims and pursuing strategies of participation.