Place: Zoom/University of Vienna, Kolingasse 14-16, R. 4.25

Time: 14:30-16:00 CET

Please sign up here [zoom link] to register for the meeting and receive the Zoom link. Dr. Tappe has shared his article “Artisanal, Small-scale and Large-scale Mining in Lao PDR” 2021/44 “Artisanal, Small-scale and Large-scale Mining in Lao PDR” as recommended background reading.

Tin ore has been mined in the Nam Phathaen river valley (Khammouane province; central Laos) since pre-colonial times. At present, artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) is still the key livelihood of many Lao village communities in this remote valley. Variants of local ASM practices currently coexist precariously with industrial tin mining, mainly carried out by Chinese and Vietnamese companies.

In my talk, I will trace the history of this coexistence, which began in the 1920s with the establishment of the first industrial tin mines under French colonial rule. One hundred years later, it is still the interplay of different mining practices that shapes the landscape and the lives of the local population in the Nam Phathaen valley. Changing subsistence strategies, labour relations, and mining-specific socio-cosmological concepts will be examined in more detail here.

Oliver Tappe is Senior Researcher at the University of Heidelberg, Institute of Anthropology. His current research project (funded by the German Research Foundation) addresses historical and anthropological questions of tin mining in Laos, with a focus on local artisanal and small-scale mining. In his research, ethnographic field work and archival studies complement each other. Tappe’s recent publications include a special issue on upland societies in Southeast Asia (co-edited 2021 with Rosalie Stolz for the journal Social Anthropology), and the volume Extracting Development: Contested Resource Frontiers in Southeast Asia, co-edited with Simon Rowedder and published in 2022 by ISEAS/Singapore.