Objective This project provides the first comparative historical analysis – local, national and transnational - of the Central African copperbelt. This globally strategic mineral region is central to the history of two nation-states (Zambia and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)), as well as wider debates about the role of mineral wealth in development. The project has three interrelated and comparative objectives. First, it will examine the copperbelt as a single region divided by a (post-)colonial border, across which flowed minerals, peoples, and ideas about the relationship between them. Political economy created the circumstances in which distinct political cultures of mining communities developed, but this also involved a process of imagination, drawing on ‘modern’ notions such as national development, but also morally framed ideas about the societies and land from which minerals are extracted. The project will explain the relationship between minerals and African polities, economies, societies and ideas. Second, it will analyse how ‘top-down’ knowledge production processes of Anglo-American and Belgian academies shaped understanding of these societies. Explaining how social scientists imagined and constructed copperbelt society will enable a new understanding of the relationship between mining societies and academic knowledge production. Third, it will explore the interaction between these intellectual constructions and the copperbelt’s political culture, exploring the interchange between academic and popular perceptions. This project will investigate the hypothesis that the resultant understanding of this region is the result of a long unequal interaction of definition and determination between western observers and African participants that has only a partial relationship to the reality of mineral extraction, filtered as it has been through successive sedimentations of imagining and representation laid down over nearly a century of urban life in central Africa. Fields of science natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesgeologysedimentologyhumanitieshistory and archaeologyhistorysocial scienceseconomics and businesseconomicspolitical economysocial sciencespolitical sciencesgovernment systems Programme(s) H2020-EU.1.1. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme Topic(s) ERC-CoG-2015 - ERC Consolidator Grant Call for proposal ERC-2015-CoG See other projects for this call Funding Scheme ERC-COG - Consolidator Grant Host institution THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD Net EU contribution € 1 599 661,00 Address WELLINGTON SQUARE UNIVERSITY OFFICES OX1 2JD Oxford United Kingdom See on map Region South East (England) Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Oxfordshire Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 1 599 661,00 Beneficiaries (1) Sort alphabetically Sort by Net EU contribution Expand all Collapse all THE CHANCELLOR, MASTERS AND SCHOLARS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD United Kingdom Net EU contribution € 1 599 661,00 Address WELLINGTON SQUARE UNIVERSITY OFFICES OX1 2JD Oxford See on map Region South East (England) Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire Oxfordshire Activity type Higher or Secondary Education Establishments Links Contact the organisation Opens in new window Website Opens in new window Participation in EU R&I programmes Opens in new window HORIZON collaboration network Opens in new window Total cost € 1 599 661,00
