The Case of the Impossible Mining Lease: Legal Rituals and 'Responsible Mining'

This paper begins with the quest by a Kenyan small-scale gold miner for a mining license that turns out to be almost impossible to secure. The artisanal and small-scale mining license is a comparatively recent focus of the assemblage of transnational law and policy initiatives organised around the promotion of sustainable or 'responsible' mining. Consensus is emerging across this assemblage that the formalisation of artisanal and small-scale mining, principally through licensing, is essential for enhanced development outcomes through improved mining regulation. This paper explores the emergence of this license within transnational law and policy initiatives as an account of the ritualistic law reform processes underway to address various social and environmental dynamics linked to mining. In tracing the colonial and post-colonial contexts in which artisanal and small-scale mining becomes a category of regulation, the paper focuses on the material practices and discursive possibilities that emerge in the spaces of tension created when law reforms are enacted, almost ritualistically, in the full knowledge of their near impossibility. Drawing on research conducted in a Kenyan gold mining area as well as in transnational policy arenas, the paper argues for closer examination of the sites where legal regulation unfolds in relation to resource extraction.