BIGSAS Colloquium - Knowledge Lab of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence

THURSDAY, 30.01.2025
RW1 | Zoom
16:00 - 17:00

Augustine Gyan - "From ‘Cash-Cow’ into Electioneering Machine? Navigating the Changing Materialities of Gold in Ghana"

This paper examines the centrality of gold and the multiple, changing vested interests surrounding its extraction, processing, and governance in Ghana. Drawing on and interrogating Richardson and Weszkalnys’ (2014) resource materiality framework, I explore the complex dynamics mediating the ‘becoming’ (or ‘unbecoming’) of gold ‘resource’ in Ghana and the implications for gold mining governance, development potentials, and extractive sector research. By introducing new evidence, I highlight the intersecting interests and power relations across scales, revealing how the ‘resourceness’ of gold is co-constituted by diverse actor interests, negotiations/contestations, and socio-political ethos of the season. For national governments, gold is seen as a driver of development; for international corporations, it remains a valuable commodity; and for local communities, it is both a crucial livelihood and a site of resistance. This interplay has spurred a contemporary ‘gold rush,’ with governments, multinational corporations, and unlicensed miners scrambling for geologically promising and contested sites. Based on an ethnographic study in Ghana, this paper shows how new political interests in gold mining and environmental activism have revived interest in previously abandoned and less contested landscapes as the ‘site’ of struggles for access to land values in mining communities and accountability demands. Furthermore, I discuss how and why environmental discourses, globalisation and technological change are (re)making the value of (abandoned) locations in mining communities.

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Participation in Person:
The Colloquium will take place in the Seminar Room S58 (RW I Building) on the campus.
Participation via Zoom:
https://uni-bayreuth.zoom.us/j/66815848399?pwd=bFAyQ0Uyb1RNOFdvT09oRVc3MXoyUT09
Meeting ID: 668 1584 8399
Passcode: 897688