Global Gold Production Touching Ground

In recent decades, gold mining has moved into increasingly remote corners of the globe. Aside from the expansion of industrial gold mining, many countries have simultaneously witnessed an expansion of labor-intensive and predominantly informal artisanal and small-scale gold mining. Both trends are usually studied in isolation, which contributes to a dominant image of a dual gold mining economy.

Counteracting this dominant view, this volume adopts a global perspective, and demonstrates that both industrial gold mining and artisanal and small-scale gold mining are functionally integrated into a global gold production system. It couples an analysis of structural trends in global gold production (expansion, informalization, and technological innovation) to twelve country case studies that detail how global gold production becomes embedded in institutional and ecological structures.

• Gold mining
• Global Production Networks (GPN)
• Resource governance
• Artisanal and Small-scale Mining (ASM)
• Gold mining constellations
• Research Foundation Flanders
• Gold mining economy
• Political economy of mining
• Informal gold mining
• Illegal gold trade
• Global gold expansion

• IOB, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium

  Boris Verbrugge, Sara Geenen

Boris Verbrugge is a post-doctoral researcher at the Insitute of Development Policy (IOB), University of Antwerp, Belgium; and a senior researcher at the Research Institute for Work and Society (HIVA), KU Leuven, Belgium. In addition to being involved in the InforMining project on informalization processes in gold mining (funded by the Research Foundation Flanders, FWO), Boris is conducting policy-oriented research into social sustainability challenges in global value chains.

Sara Geenen is an assistant professor at the Institute of Development Policy’s (IOB) Great Lakes of Africa Center (GLAC), University of Antwerp, Belgium. She is coordinating the FWO-funded project InforMining. Her research interests lie in the global and local development dimensions of extractivist projects, addressing questions about socially responsible and inclusive forms of globalization.