Digging Deeper: Contested livelihoods and sociocosmological relations among artisanal miners in Laos (1893 to present)

• Applicant: Dr. Oliver Tappe
• Subject Area: Social and Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology ; Asian Studies
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 446624996

The project explores local economic and sociocosmological relations among artisanal miners in Laos. Already in precolonial times, several ethnic groups in Laos unearthed minerals such as tin and iron parallel to their agricultural subsistence. During French colonial administration (1893-1954), first industrialisation attempts took place in the mining sector. Yet still today we can identify an ambivalent coexistence of local artisanal mining and large-scale mining (often on Chinese- and Vietnamese-run mining concessions).The comparative analysis of two exemplary case studies of artisanal mining in Laos aims to investigate these tensions between local livelihoods and global capitalism from a combined historical-anthropological perspective. Besides investigating labour relations and processes of artisanal mining, as well as economic and ecological impacts, this project also considers the culturally specific, sociocosmological relations and ritual practices in local mining contexts. The combination of political ecology and the anthropology of ontologies opens new perspectives on the entanglements of local subsistence strategies, transnational capitalism, social change, and shifting human-environment relations. How does artisanal and large-scale mining affect local communities in Laos and their specific social and cosmological relations? From the French colonial intervention to the present Chinese Belt-and-Road Initiative, the sediments of corresponding social dynamics and ruptures will be explored. Adopting an innovative method mix of anthropological and historical approaches, this project explores local lifeworlds of peasant-miner communities and their contested livelihoods in past and present.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: France, Laos
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Guido Sprenger
• Cooperation Partners: Dr. Michel Lorrillard; Dr. Bounleuth Sengsoulin