Class formation and capital accumulation in the countryside: Artisanal and small-scale gold mining in South Kivu, DR Congo

Ben Radley

doi:10.1111/joac.12474

Class formation and capital accumulation in the countryside: Artisanal and small-scale gold mining in South Kivu, DR Congo

Ben Radley

Department of Social & Policy Sciences

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

11 Citations (SciVal)

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Abstract

To date, the expansive social science literature on artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) in Africa has received little attention from scholars of agrarian political economy. This paper attempts to bridge this gap, based on an in-depth study of ASM in South Kivu Province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The main argument is that the capital–labour social relation underpinning ASM in South Kivu has facilitated the emergence of a capitalist managerial class of dynamic and prosperous rural Congolese. This class has, in turn, been driving increasing sectoral productivity via technological assimilation and capital formation, while also making commercial and productive investments in other, non-mining sectors. Drawing from the findings, the common conceptualisation of African ASM as a low productivity, subsistence activity is questioned, and the perception in the existing literature that African ASM miners and foreign mining corporations are not in competition for the same mineral deposits is challenged.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	398-414
Number of pages	17
Journal	Journal of Agrarian Change
Volume	22
Issue number	2
Early online date	30 Dec 2021
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12474
Publication status	Published - 24 Mar 2022

Funding

The author is grateful for comments received on earlier drafts of this paper, which was presented at the ninth annual conference of the International Initiative for Promoting Political Economy, at the Juraj Dobrila University of Pula in September 2018, and the Agrarian Change Seminars at the Department of Development Studies, SOAS, in October 2019. The author would also like to thank the two reviewers for their generous engagement with the manuscript and valuable suggestions for improvements. Lastly, the author is affiliated to the Centre d'Expertise en Gestion Minière (CEGEMI) at the Université catholique de Bukavu and wants to express his gratitude to CEGEMI members for their support and contribution to his work. This work was supported by the Leverhulme Trust: Study Abroad Studentship Grant SAS‐2016‐047.

Keywords

Congo
accumulation
class
corporations
gold
mining

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Global and Planetary Change
Archaeology
Anthropology
Archaeology

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10.1111/joac.12474

Class & Capital in South Kivu (accepted author manuscript)
This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Radley, B. (2021). Class formation and capital accumulation in the countryside: Artisanal and small-scale gold mining in South Kivu, DR Congo. Journal of Agrarian Change, 1– 17., which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/joac.12474. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions. This article may not be enhanced, enriched or otherwise transformed into a derivative work, without express permission from Wiley or by statutory rights under applicable legislation. Copyright notices must not be removed, obscured or modified. The article must be linked to Wiley’s version of record on Wiley Online Library and any embedding, framing or otherwise making available the article or pages thereof by third parties from platforms, services and websites other than Wiley Online Library must be prohibited.
Accepted author manuscript, 288 KB

Cite this

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Class formation and capital accumulation in the countryside: Artisanal and small-scale gold mining in South Kivu, DR Congo

Abstract

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Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

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