The Rise and Demise of Gold: Mapping Technological Change and Creativity on a Cameroonian Resource Frontier

该项目考察了喀麦隆资源边界的出现和关闭，展示了它如何构成殖民和后殖民的“技术界面”，通过黄金的开采和枯竭产生了社会技术变革和创造力的形式。我将这些见解与新兴的关于资源、技术和中国在非洲日益增长的作用的人类学研究进行了对话。这个项目建立在我博士在喀麦隆东部地区进行的民族志研究的基础上，那里的Gbaya社区自法国殖民矿业公司（20世纪30年代）发现以来一直采用手工小规模采矿（ASM）开采黄金，直到最近中国公司的到来，这些公司从根本上耗尽了当地的金矿。我探索了不断变化的物质提取过程，通过这些过程，当地居民在这种新的稀缺情况下创造了生计。我展示了“生成”的实践和概念是如何产生的，并在两个相互关联的尺度上告知与资源生产相关的社会物质转化过程。首先，我研究了采矿中的物质转化，通过这种转化，Gbaya生产、概念化和价值黄金。在第二部分中，我通过社会技术变革，在更广泛的范围内探索Gbaya采掘实践的转变。这个项目旨在巩固和发展我的博士研究，重点放在这第二个研究链上，探索技术本身的产生和转化。通过研究技术上的长期居留，本项目旨在阐明喀麦隆东部地区及其Gbaya居民的生活是如何被历史上双重资源边界所构建的，这条边界由法国人打开，由中国人关闭。考虑到黄金的开始和结束，我展示了Gbaya与法国殖民地和中国矿业公司之间的相遇如何在技术领域产生了生成过程。在这种背景下，我将ASM概念化为一个“技术界面”，一个互动的生产性场所，在这里，本地Gbaya和传入的（法国/中国）思想、实践和对象相互交织，产生了技术创造力、实验和变化的实例，我认为，这些实例具体化并构成了“前沿”动态（Kopytoff 1987, Tsing 2003）。具体来说，这考虑了Gbaya矿工如何在物质上、仪式上和概念上适当地重新部署法国殖民和中国的采矿技术，并将其重新部署到他们自己已有的社会技术剧目中，以克服法国和中国造成的剥夺。更广泛地说，该项目将揭示整个非洲正在加剧的资源开采、外国主导的土地掠夺和农村转型过程。我的文章考察了这种“界面”的两次迭代：Gbaya如何在仪式上挪用采矿技术，以及在法国和中国之后如何创新地重新部署挖掘机。我的跨学科研讨会将对非洲技术变革和创新这一未被充分研究的问题进行比较、实证和理论探索，为我自己的概念方法提供信息，并扩大我的学术网络。我的新研究将补充我的博士研究成果，提供有关Franco-Gbaya和Sino-Gbaya采矿技术遭遇的关键数据。档案研究使我能够进一步比较殖民时期的法国和当代Gbaya采矿技术，以确定社会技术创新。关于喀麦隆当前采掘动态的访谈数据将集中在中国对这一资源前沿的持续影响上。我的报告将向非政府组织传达我的博士研究成果，以创造社会影响和参与，突出ASM被忽视的技术方面，揭示采矿的创造性和破坏性影响，以及中国人对这些社区的全面影响。

This project examines the emergence and closure of a resource frontier in Cameroon, showing how it has constituted a colonial and post-colonial 'technological interface' generative of forms of sociotechnical change and creativity, brought about through the extraction and depletion of gold. I bring these insights into dialogue with the burgeoning anthropological study of resources, technology, and the growing role of China in Africa. This project builds on my PhD's ethnographic research in the East Region of Cameroon, where Gbaya communities practice artisanal small-scale mining (ASM) to extract gold since its discovery by French colonial mining companies (1930s) until the recent arrival of Chinese companies that are radically depleting local gold deposits. I explored the changing material processes of extraction through which local inhabitants carved out a livelihood in this new situation of scarcity. I show how practices and concepts of 'generativity' arise from and inform processes of sociomaterial transformation relating to the production of resources at two interconnected scales. In the first, I examine material transformations within mining, through which Gbaya produce, conceptualise and value gold. In the second, I explore the transformations of Gbaya extractive practices at a broader scale, as and through sociotechnical change. This project seeks to consolidate and develop my PhD research, with a focus on this second research strand, to explore the generation and transformation of techniques themselves. By studying the technological longue durée, this project aims to elucidate how the East Region of Cameroon and the lives of its Gbaya inhabitants have been structured by a historically doubled resource frontier, opened by the French and closed by the Chinese. Considering the beginning and end of gold alongside each other, I show how encounters between Gbaya and French colonial and Chinese mining companies give rise to generative processes within the technological realm. I conceptualise ASM in this context as a 'technological interface', a productive site of interaction where vernacular Gbaya and incoming (French/Chinese) ideas, practices and objects are interwoven, resulting in instances of technological creativity, experimentation and change that, I argue, materialise and constitute 'frontier' dynamics (Kopytoff 1987, Tsing 2003). Concretely, this considers how Gbaya miners materially, ritually and conceptually appropriate and redeploy French colonial and Chinese mining techniques into their own pre-existing sociotechnical repertoire to overcome the dispossession caused by the French and Chinese. More broadly, this project will shed light on processes of resource extraction, foreign-led land grabs and rural transformation that are intensifying throughout Africa. My articles examine two iterations of this 'interface': how Gbaya ritually appropriated mining techniques and innovatively redeployed excavators in the aftermath of the French and Chinese, respectively. My interdisciplinary workshop will enable a comparative, empirical and theoretical, exploration of this underexamined question of technological change and innovation in Africa, to inform my own conceptual approach and widen my academic networks. My new research will complement my PhD findings, providing crucial data on the Franco-Gbaya and Sino-Gbaya technological encounters around mining. Archival research enables me to further compare colonial French and contemporary Gbaya mining techniques to identify sociotechnical innovation. Interview data on current extractive dynamics in Cameroon will focus on the ongoing Chinese impact on this resource frontier. My report will communicate my PhD findings for NGOs to create social impact and engagement, highlighting the neglected technological aspect of ASM to shed light on the creative and destructive effects of mining and the full impact of the Chinese on these communities.