The overall objective of the project was to consider the history and configuration of remote economies that are perceived to be disconnected from broader global economic forms. The project specifically explored small-scale gold mining activities - also known as ‘wildcat mining’ - that take place in remote regions of the Amazon rainforest. Small-scale gold mining in South America has only recently been appearing in global news sources. Previously it had been subordinated to accounts of large-scale corporate mining – considered to be the primary actors in the extractive landscape - and community resistance to these extractive activities. However, not only does gold procured from wildcat mining make up a large portion of global supply, but it also results in some of the worst environmental devastation in South America, with patches of deforestation visible from space and rivers polluted with huge quantities of mercury. The project extends a concept of ‘wildcat economics’, which can be defined as informal economic activities that take particular forms in isolated locations.
The central research questions of the project were: i) What are the social relations that enable ‘wildcat economies’ to function? ii) What economic strategies and processes are undertaken to enable remote mining? And iii) How do prospectors envision their place in the global economy? These questions were explored using ethnographic techniques, predominantly through semi-structures interviews with prospectors within and adjacent to the Madre de Dios region of Peru where wildcat gold mining activities are clustered. Rather than exploring capitalism and resource extraction as dominated by corporate expansion, this project considers capitalist forms that emerge from a multitude of individual ventures beyond the edges of formal infrastructure. Telling this story from the perspective of the prospectors themselves offers accounts of extraction as a lived reality – propelled by affects of desire, creativity and entrepreneurship - rather than a dehumanised political-economic process.
The conclusions of the action were numerous, but specifically reveal that small-scale mining has been taking place in the region for many decades in response to global economic shifts in the 1980s. For the global south this resulted in increased poverty and in turn diversified survival strategies at the local level, in this case the pursuit of informal mining. Andean prospectors see isolated forested regions as settings of danger but also of opportunity, where they can seek refuge and maintain agency over their sense of well-being. The theme of this project is relevant to wider society because it brings into sharper focus a poorly understood phenomenon that has global significance, in particular issues of poverty brought about by neoliberal reforms, deforestation and contamination, illicit global supply chains of precious metals, and the intimate link between all these phenomena. The interconnection between different economic scales such as these, and their impact on the environment, are important to recognise in order to make informed recommendations to policy-makers and NGOs who work on resource extraction and climate change. The observations garnered from the project will also be used to contribute to current debates in the fields of economic anthropology, environmental humanities and Latin American studies.
