mining

Roșia Montană

This film follows the inhabitants of an ancient Carpathian village as they resist its destruction by a Romanian-Canadian corporation, which plans to turn it into Europe’s largest mine for gold and silver.

Katanga Business

This film examines a mine that acts as a microcosm for globalization; illegal and legal workers, local and foreign businessmen, and politicians all navigate the new alliances that modern Africa demands.

"Environmental Experiences of Chinese People in the Mid-Nineteenth Century Australian Gold Rushes"

Fei Sheng analyzes the ecological factors in China that spurred migration to Australia at a time when the discovery of gold as a natural resource made the country an ideal migration destination. He shows how Chinese migrants applied their environmental experience in a white settler colony.

"An Impure Nature: Memory and the Neo-Materialist Flip at America’s Biggest Toxic Superfund Site"

This essay reflects on an incident in 1995, when 300 snow geese died in the flooded Berkeley Pit, a toxic open pit copper mine in the northwestern United States. In his analysis the author draws on new materialist theoretical approaches that reject anthropocentric thinking and instead emphasize the powerful materiality of cultural phenomena.