Boom2Dust

There are industrial mining centres in southern Africa that once stood at the very forefront of imperial expansion. Once they promised modernity, progress and economic development,but now they are bedevilled by the toxic legacy of economic collapse, societal upheaval and environmental ruin. “Boom2Dust” will research and write the post-humanist multi-species environmental histories of three industrial mining centres between 1870 and 2020.

Central to the research will be the testing of a new methodological approach in which the landscape is taken as a historical source that can be read. Ample socio-anthropological studies, as well as political, economic and cultural histories of southern Africa’s industrial mining revolution exist, but until now no environmental histories of this transformation have been written. Given the radical change that occurred, and the fact that mineral extraction, once heralded as the epitome of progress, lies at the root of the Climate Crisis in the Anthropocene, the time has come for a more critical approach to answer the question, what was the environmental impact of the industrial mining revolution that transformed southern Africa? Specifically, what was the impact of industrial mining when viewed from a more than human multi-species perspective? Succinctly, how did industrial mining transform the living space of plants and animals (including humans) in three mining centres?

The project will investigate the environmental history of three industrial mining centres in southern Africa: Kimberley in South Africa, Kabwe in Zambia, and Tsumeb in Namibia. Through a comparative study, “Boom2Dust” will describe and analyse the long-term impact of mining in southern Africa on more than humans alone. Central to the research will be the testing of a new methodological approach in which the landscape is taken as a historical source that can be read.

The project subjects southern Africa’s history of mining to a new analysis that consciously seeks to reconsider and take into account the role of animals, plants, geology and geography. That is, it actively attempts to decentre the human from history, and concentrate on the hidden and obscured histories of others without whom human history is not possible. At the outset and in its implementation the research draws on different disciplines, with a methodology that consciously seeks to transcend disciplinary boundaries.

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