In a fast-changing world, where the extraction of natural resources is key to development, whilst also creating environmental and social disasters, understanding how landscapes, people and politics are shaped by extraction is crucial. Looking at resource extraction in numerous locations at different stages of development, including North, West and South Africa, India, Kazakhstan and Australia, a broad picture is created, covering coal, natural-gas, gold and cement mining, from corporate to 'artisanal' extraction, from the large to the small scale. The chapters answer the questions: What is ideological about resource extraction? How does extraction transform the physical landscape? And how does the extractive process determine which stakeholders become dominant or marginalised? Contributing to policy debates, Mining Encounters uncovers the tensions, negotiations and disparities between different actors in the extractive industries, including exploiters and those who benefit or are impoverished by resource exploitation.

List of Figures and Maps Preface 1. Introduction: Negotiating the Multiple Edges of Mining Encounters - Robert Jan Pijpers and Thomas Hylland Eriksen 2. From Allegiance to Connection: Structural Injustice, Scholarly Norms and the Anthropological Ethics of Mining Encounters - Alex Golub 3. The Shooting Fields of Porgera Joint Venture: An Exploration of Corporate Power, Reputational Dynamics and Indigenous Agency - Catherine Coumans 4. Rubbish at the Border: A Minefield of Conservation Politics at the Lawa River, Suriname/French Guiana - Sabine Luning and Marjo de Theije 5. Territories of Contestation: Negotiating Mining Concessions in Sierra Leone - Robert Jan Pijpers 6. Drilling Down Comparatively: Resource Histories, Subterranean Unconventional Gas and Diverging Social Responses in Two Australian Regions - Kim de Rijke 7. Coal Trafficking: Reworking National Energy Security via Coal Transport at the North Karanpura Coalfields, India - Patrik Oskarsson and Nikas Kindo 8. Diamonds and Plural Temporalities: Articulating Encounters in the Mines of Sierra Leone -Lorenzo DAngelo 9. Risky Encounters: The Ritual Prevention of Accidents in the Coal Mines of Kazakhstan - Eeva Kesküla Notes on Contributors Index