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This article outlines a possible reading path through Taussig'searly works, a path specifically influenced by Benjamin's insights into topics such as fetishism, violence, and storytelling. In particular, it examines the way Taussig approaches two issues: the Marxian question of commodity fetishism, and the question of writing against terror. The analysis of commodity and State fetishism leads Taussig to reject the symptomatic reading offered by thinkers such as Marx and Freud. The issue of violence or terror drives him to reflect on the politics of representation. In line with Benjamin's reflections on the role of the storyteller in bourgeois society, Taussig intertwines these two lines of thought and interprets anthropology as a form of storytelling. This article highlights some of the epistemological and ontological assumptions behind this provocative idea. It argues that despite the radical nature of its premises, Taussig defends a weak conception of criticism.

Among anthropologists inspired by Walter Benjamin and the early Frankfurt School, Michael Taussig is notable. For Taussig, Benjamin is like a muse, a source of inspiration to ponder over his extended fieldwork in South America. This article outlines a possible reading path through Taussig'searly works, a path specifically influenced by Benjamin's insights into topics such as fetishism, violence, and storytelling. In particular, it examines the way Taussig approaches two issues: the Marxian question of commodity fetishism, and the question of writing against terror. The analysis of commodity and State fetishism leads Taussig to reject the symptomatic reading offered by thinkers such as Marx and Freud. The issue of violence or terror drives him to reflect on the politics of representation. In line with Benjamin's reflections on the role of the storyteller in bourgeois society, Taussig intertwines these two lines of thought and interprets anthropology as a form of storytelling. This article highlights some of the epistemological and ontological assumptions behind this provocative idea. It argues that despite the radical nature of its premises, Taussig defends a weak conception of criticism.

In Sierra Leone, the environmental and economic impacts of extractive industry are a source of great concern for local communities. Through the usual weapons of the weak (e.g., sabotage, thefts, and rumors) and the idiom of the occult, the population expresses dissatisfaction with a modernity which has always been promised but never achieved. By comparing three different cases this paper argues that extractive landscapes are places of great political contest at the local and national level. In the first and the second case I will explore the ways in which the inhabitants of two different mining regions interpret in terms of the occult some unexpected and mysterious events occurring to a large-scale mining company and to a hydroelectric power dam. In the third case I will show how the complex interplay of negotiations between diamond miners and inhabitants of mining areas can be mediated by the presence of spiritual beings locally named 'debul dem'. What I suggest is that mining or extractive landscapes are never neutral sites. They embody past experiences which simultaneously globally connect and locally disconnect places and people. From an anthropological perspective, occult mining narratives can be analyzed as forms of social memory pointing to a history of violence, terror, and uncertainties inscribed in the landscape and dwelling practices. The basic idea of this paper is that the local discourses on the occult are not just ways to make sense of the uncertainties and anxieties of a globalized modernity but are, above all, highly politicized practices.

In the last decade, the Sierra Leone's diamond mines have been the focus of an intense debate among analysts and experts of the development. Two main interrelated issues have been at stake in this debate: first, to understand the economic and political reasons that had supported the civil war from 1991 to 2002 and, second, to understand how to convert a potential "conflict commodity" in a resource for peace and prosperity. In this paper, I intend to highlight some recurring stereotypes of this debate. In particular, I will focus on a constellation of representations that depict the artisanal miners either as workers poorly organized and prone to irrational economic behavior, or as workers subjected to forms of exploitation akin to slavery. Based on fieldwork conducted in the diamond mining areas of Sierra Leone (2007-2011), this article intends to analyze the main forms of working organization and distribution of earnings among the miners. By challenging some stereotypes characterizing the development discourse, my aim is to show the cultural complexity and the historical density of the practices through which the miners face the risks and uncertainties of their job.

Le discipline e le tecniche su cui si fonda il governo della natura, dell'ambiente e del paesaggio raramente accedono ai saperi antropologici nella comprensione e gestione degli equilibri socio-ambientali. Eppure l'antropologia, attraverso la pratica etnografica, contribuisce ampiamente alla riflessione interdisciplinare sulla prevenzione e gestione dei conflitti ambientali causati della competizione globale per le risorse naturali del pianeta. In questo volume viene presentata una raccolta di articoli inediti basati sull'analisi dettagliata di conflitti socio-ambientali legati a specifiche risorse naturali (es. foreste, acqua, petrolio, paesaggi) presenti in diversi contesti geografico-culturali (Europa, America Latina, Asia, Africa). Pensato e destinato ad un pubblico eterogeneo (studenti, ricercatori, docenti, cooperanti, amministratori, attivisti, ecc.), il presente volume si propone come una efficace introduzione ai temi più urgenti dell'antropologia ambientale, dell'antropologia dello sviluppo e dell'ecologia politica. Amalia Rossi collabora con il Dipartimento di Scienze Umane per la Formazione dell'Università Bicocca di Milano, dove ha conseguito il Dottorato di Ricerca in Antropologia della contemporaneità (2012). Ha svolto ricerca sul campo in Thailandia del nord, dove si è occupata di movimenti sociali di stampo ambientalista e di politiche della rappresentazione ambientale e paesaggistica. Ha partecipato a seminari e conferenze in Europa e Thailandia ed è autrice di saggi e articoli su riviste nazionali ed estere. Lorenzo D'Angelo è dottore di ricerca in Scienze Umane - Antropologia della contemporaneità (Università di Milano-Bicocca). Ha svolto ricerche di campo in Italia occupandosi delle forme di esclusione e di sofferenza sociale dei migranti senza regolare permesso di soggiorno e dei richiedenti asilo politico. Dal 2007 svolge una ricerca storica ed etnografica sull'estrazione dei diamanti in Sierra Leone. Si interessa di antropologia del lavoro, estrazione mineraria, ecologia politica e global commodity chains.

Gold mining, like all other forms of mining, is strongly associated with the production of a wide range of residues, whether this concerns (toxic) waste materials or the environments transformed in pursuit of gold. Frequently, these residual products, such as soil, mud, rocks, and water, as well as the environments from which they are extracted or where they are deposited, appear as waste, cast aside or abandoned, rendered as useless by-products or destroyed lands. In this photographic essay, we build on recent insight regarding the fluid character of waste by extending analysis into both the domains of materials and of space because not only can specific materials be repurposed as resources, but also specific spaces can be transformed from sites of abandonment to sites of production (or vice versa), whether for mining or other activities. These photographic series show how different actors repurpose material and spatial residues. By centralising images of processes of repurposing, this essay nuances and offers a counterweight to dominant visual narratives. These typically focus on environmental and social damage, and often take a perspective 'from above' as they largely draw on aerial images. In doing so, these narratives tend to flatten or even erase local complexity and heterogeneity, and risk reproducing received negative stereotypes about artisanal and small-scale mining and miners. Importantly, as will transpire throughout the essay, the phenomena and processes depicted in our images shape and are shaped by different social, political, economic, technological, environmental, and historical relations and dynamics. These include, for example, former mining trajectories, gendered production relations, miners' socio-economic positions, the involvement of external actors, and the introduction of new capital, knowledge and technologies. Ultimately, this illuminates the necessity of approaching 'waste' in fluid, relational, and transformative terms as material and spatial endings are turned into new beginnings. ; Funders: Belmont Forum, NORFACE (New Opportunities for Research Funding Agency Cooperation in Europe). ; Gold Matters

Growth strategies in mining regions promote gold extraction based on industrial mining, associating Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining (ASGM) with persistent informality. Against this background, we consider how to approach transformations to sustainability in ASGM. Acknowledging how problematic this topic is for sustainability debates, given how ASGM is associated with a host of environmental and social problems, we argue that a justice lens demands we confront such challenges within the global politics of sustainability. This leads us to review advances in the study of ASGM, linked to debates on extractivism, resource materialities, and informality. We use the notion of gold lifeways to capture how the matter of mining shapes different worlds of extraction. We argue that consideration of the potential for transformations to sustainability needs to be grounded within the realities of ASGM. This necessitates giving value to miners' knowledge(s), perspectives and interests, while recognising the plurality of mining futures. Nevertheless, we conclude that between the immediacy of precarious work and the structural barriers to change in ASGM, the challenges for transformation cannot be underestimated.

Growth strategies in mining regions promote gold extraction based on industrial mining, associating Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining (ASGM) with persistent informality. Against this background, we consider how to approach transformations to sustainability in ASGM. Acknowledging how problematic this topic is for sustainability debates, given how ASGM is associated with a host of environmental and social problems, we argue that a justice lens demands we confront such challenges within the global politics of sustainability. This leads us to review advances in the study of ASGM, linked to debates on extractivism, resource materialities,andinformality. Weuse thenotionofgoldlifewaysto capture how the matter of mining shapes different worlds of extraction. We argue that consideration of the potential for transformations to sustainability needs to be grounded within the realities of ASGM. This necessitates giving value to miners' knowledge(s), perspectives and interests, while recognising the plurality of mining futures. Nevertheless, we conclude that between the immediacy of precarious work and the structural barriers to change in ASGM, the challenges for transformation cannot be underestimated.