Daniel Tubb on Shifting Livelihoods: Gold Mining and Subsistence in the Chocó, Colombia

The next speaker in the Environmental Praxis Lecture Series is anthropologist Daniel Tubb on “Shifting Livelihoods: Gold Mining and Subsistence in the Chocó, Colombia” on Friday, November 6 at 9:00am (Atlantic time). Email Tracy at tglynn@stu.ca for the Zoom link.

Daniel Tubb is Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton and an Adjunct Research Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Carleton University in Ottawa. Trained at Carleton University in the late 2000s as an anthropologist, he has written a book and academic articles on Colombia, on writing, on small-scale and artisanal mining, on violence and citizenship. He specializes in sociocultural and environmental anthropology, ethnography, and on political economy on Colombia and New Brunswick. He is a collaborator with the research project, RAVEN Rural Action & Voices for the Environment, and serves on the editorial board of the NB Media Co-op. He is a collaborator with the research project, RAVEN Rural Action & Voices for the Environment, and serves on the editorial board of the

His most recent book, Shifting Livelihood (University of Washington Press, 2020) is about gold mining in Colombia. It shows how people employ various methods to extract gold in the rainforests of the Chocó, in northwest Colombia. Through an ethnography of gold that examines the movement of people, commodities, and capital, Shifting Livelihoods investigates how resource extraction reshapes a place. In the Chocó, gold enables forms of “shift” (rebusque)—a metaphor for the fluid livelihood strategy adopted by forest dwellers and migrant gold miners alike as they seek informal work amid a drug war. Mining’s effects on rural people, corporations, and politics are on view in this fine-grained account of daily life in a regional economy dominated by gold and cocaine. He is working on a new book, as well as new research projects in Colombia and New Brunswick.

Tubb’s book can be purchased here: https://uwapress.uw.edu/…/9780295…/shifting-livelihoods/

This lecture is organized by St. Thomas University’s Environmental Praxis course and supported by the NB Media Co-op and RAVEN Rural Action & Voices for the Environment, a research project based at the University of New Brunswick.

Nov. 20 – Valerie Lannon, climate activist and co-author of Indigenous Sovereignty and Socialism,and David Bush, York Ph.D. student, labour organizer and editor of Rank and File and Spring,on the Green New Deal and the socialist case against the carbon tax.

For more information, contact Tracy at tglynn@stu.ca.