Robyn D'Avignon. A Ritual Geology: Gold and Subterranean Knowledge in Savanna West Africa. Durham: Duke University Press, 2022. Illustrations. 328 pp. $104.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4780-1583-3; $27.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-4780-1847-6.
Reviewed by Jabulani Shaba (Stellenbosch University)
Published on H-Environment (January, 2024)
Commissioned by Daniella McCahey (Texas Tech University)
Robyn d’Avignon’s A Ritual Geology: Gold and Subterranean Knowledge in Savanna West Africa introduces the reader to the ingenious lifeworlds of artisanal miners in West Africa. In seven chapters, d’Avignon illuminates the complex narrative of African knowledge production and resource extraction using thick ethnographic descriptions, oral and life histories, and archival sources on the orpailleurs—African miners in Guinea, Mali, and Senegal. Of interest is the author’s use of the idea of “ritual geology,” “a set of practices, prohibitions and cosmological engagements with the earth that are widely shared and cultivated across a regional geological formation” (p. 5). The author shows how the shifting meanings and forms of ritual geology are integrated within the everyday lives of African miners. She also illustrates how the understanding and practice of ritual geology changed over time—from the precolonial era to the present day. The book is hinged on two central arguments. The first represents the agency of African miners as “intellectual actors” who fundamentally shaped modern exploration geology and were crucial to the global dynamics of extractive capitalism (p. 3). The second thread shows the long history of gold mining, miners' deep knowledge of underground mining, and the way that, over time, ritual geology began to shape the resource politics in the region. The introduction provides context to understand the broader themes and the decolonial approach that seeks to deconstruct colonial categorization of African technological advancements in mining.
In chapter 1, the author explores the geography of the mining landscape and at the same time provides the long history of mining, locating the Mandinka lineages and their deep knowledge of mining techniques. She notes that as early as the seventeenth century, explorers visited such regions as Bambuk, observing African quotidian mining processes. After independence from French colonialism, geologists continued to trace how Africans practiced mining to compile geological information and update their mining maps. The author argues that “the book is one of the first sustained accounts of the central role of African mining expertise of geological exploration in colonial and postcolonial Africa” (p. 14). The book highlights that the idea of ritual geology stems from a deep historical past of medieval West Africa. This ritual geology needs to be understood not only within the confines of capital land interests in the mining economy but also within the context of underworld (subterranean) spirits. The author adds to the growing historiography of mining, religion, spirituality, and the "invisible" worlds of mining. Through thick ethnographic descriptions, she brings to life the ambience of the orpaillage economy and integrates it within the broader narratives of industrial mining and global flows of minerals commodities. In bringing out this complexity, she illustrates that corporate mining is inextricably linked with the orpaillage mining economy in the West African savanna. In this world of mining, we also are exposed to the contestations between the Islamic religion and the orpailleurs; the local miners and migrant miners from Mali, Guinea, and Burkina Faso; and the gendered nature of gold mining.
Informed by a decolonial approach, the author delinks and redefines African artisanal mining, challenges conventional colonial binaries, and argues for the need to shift from the colonial and “racialized legal frameworks” that defined artisanal mining (p. 7). D'Avignon demonstrates that while Africans were exploited by colonial mining labor systems, they provided critical scientific knowledge on which large-scale mining enterprises depended. Part of this knowledge included African miners' knowledge of the subterranean and intellect on the geology of mining, which was, in essence, the gold miners’ “ritual geology.” Through an extensive collection of 150 oral histories, the author highlights that it was Kedogou ancestors, not the geologists, who discovered gold deposits. While the author spent a considerable amount of time conducting research, she reflects on some of the challenges faced by researchers in mining communities—in particular, language and conversational fluency. Through her collaborations with research assistants, we are introduced to an important historiographical and methodological insight: the importance of research assistants as brokers and cocreators of knowledge. While the author effectively demonstrates the early architectural works in the Asante Kingdom and medieval Zimbabwe, it would have also been interesting to show how the idea of "ritual geology" and the ingenuity of African miners were also prevalent in southern African states, such as the gold mines in the Mutapa Kingdom in precolonial Zimbabwe. Such a comparative approach could have also strengthened her argument of African miners as intellectual actors. The author also notes that intellectual skills were passed on from father to son. These intellectual and scientific skills included "how to taste and smell soils for the presence of iron, pyrite and gold" (p. 78).
D’Avignon’s book is refreshing and provokes debates about African artisanal miners and local knowledge. While the focus is on the entanglement of rituals, the occult, and mining geology, the author provides an interdisciplinary approach to understanding the broader themes of political economy, natural resource governance, and capitalist mining. The book not only is for historians and anthropologists but also provides a basic and lucid prose for those who want to understand the relationship between artisanal and corporate mining in sub-Saharan Africa. In the last paragraph of the book, d’Avignon invokes an interesting dynamic on the future of artisanal mining, as she asks, "What are we obliged to leave for the unborn and the otherworldly? What is the price, in this life or the next, for taking more than our share? These questions are critical as they provide a teaser to understand resource governance and the sustainability of artisanal mining in the continent" (p. 206).
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Citation:
Jabulani Shaba. Review of D'Avignon, Robyn, A Ritual Geology: Gold and Subterranean Knowledge in Savanna West Africa.
H-Environment, H-Net Reviews.
January, 2024.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=58270
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