Autonomy Where the Underground and Aboveground Meet: Processing Plants in Colombian Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining

Social science research about extraction often conflates mining and ore processing activities or disregards processing altogether. This article highlights the value of studying mineral processing as a distinct domain. Our article centers on processing plants used for artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM), where miners employ their “empirical” knowledge about processing through bodily interactions with their ore to transform it into a commodity of universally recognized value: gold. In our ethnographic account of the processing practices in two ASGM towns in rural Colombia, external efforts to “improve” mineworkers’ ore-to-gold practices threatened the autonomy they otherwise experienced in their artisanal forms of organizing their labor. We trace the insights, critiques, and responses that emerged from the miners’ positions within gold processing assemblages of knowledge, material affordances, technology, and sociopolitical organizations. Analyzing these miners’ experiences provides novel perspectives for scholarship of workers’ desires to preserve autonomy amid looming threats of deskilling.