New Publication : "Vertical Farming: Tin MINiNG and Agro-Mineros in Bolivia"

Excited that this article has finally come out - it has been in the works for over two years. You can follow the citation below to find it online.

Andrea Marston (2019) Vertical farming: tin mining and agro-mineros in Bolivia, The Journal of Peasant Studies, DOI: 10.1080/03066150.2019.1604511

Abstract:
Throughout Bolivia, collectives of small-scale miners known as ‘mining cooperatives’ have developed a reputation for cutthroat extractive practices that were shaped by neoliberal restructuring starting in the 1980s. Charting a history that starts at the turn of the twentieth century, this paper argues that cooperative mining in the tin belt of Northern Potosí has emerged as a vertical instantiation of small-holder farming practices that migrated, along with miners themselves, from surrounding indigenous ayllus. In the subterranean, however, these practices interacted with the legacies of tin mining, which was characterized by labor hierarchies that corresponded with vertical variation in ore quality. New social striations crystallized as small-holder farming customs settled into the subterranean structure, creating sharp social differentiation across these subsoil‘family farms.’ The class composition of mining cooperatives at the national level has been shaped by these entangled underground histories, with implications for the country’s economic and environmental futures.