Tomas Frederiksen

2006 University of Manchester , IDPM. MA in International Development: Poverty, Conflict and Reconstruction

2000 University of Sussex . BA (Hons) in Geography with Development Studies

The Spatial Politics of Mining on the Zambian Copperbelt 1900 – 2008.

Supervisor: Gavin Bridge and Dr. Noel Castree

Space, power, natural resources, mining, development.

Broadly speaking, my research attempts to understand the relations between power, knowledge, and space through an examination of the practices and discourses that sustain natural resource development. My approach is informed by a long tradition of examining the role of space and spatiality in shaping society and social process within political geography and draws upon the frameworks and theories for understanding the spatiality of power developed John Allen, David Harvey, Steve Pile and Michael Keith among others. The core of this analysis is a focus on how different forms of power are mediated and spatialised in different ways, the linkages between domination and resistance, and how this is played out across space. Examining the production and reproduction of space in the context of the mining sector can provide an insight into the social relations on which natural resource development depends and which, in turn, it sustains.

My current PhD research aims to conduct a comparative historico-geographical analysis of the spaces of natural resource extraction on the Zambian Copperbelt. As its basis, this research works from an understanding of the political economy of mining on the Zambian Copperbelt as a product of the tension between the expansive imperatives of capitalism and diseconomies imposed by the materiality of biophysical nature (Bunker and Ciccantel, 2005). From this starting point, this research seeks to comparatively explore the spaces of natural resource extraction carved out in the colonial period (1920’s -1930’s) and the recent expansion and intensification of mining following privatisation in the late 1990’s. Here, two periods and modes of extraction are compared: a contemporary ‘neoliberal’ configuration and a historical ‘colonial’ configuration. Of central interest in this examination is the techniques, strategies, institutions and struggles (or dispostifs) involved in producing, structuring and governing the spaces of mining which enabled the continued extraction of valuable minerals over a longer period of time. These assemblages and practices are understood through the concept of ‘space’ as a window on deeper social forces and a way of understanding the contested political relations at work (Harvey, 2006).  This research attempts to understand both the continuities and differences between the eras of mineral extraction both in terms of the problems faced in producing a stable space, but also in the techniques and strategies deployed in resolving these challenges.

In attempting to understand these ‘dispostifs’ in two separate periods, this research will ask a number of key questions of each period before moving to compare and contrast the findings:

1. How was the ‘extractive economy’ of the Zambian Copperbelt produced and shaped by the struggle to resolve the contradiction between the expansive dynamics of global capitalist forces and the diseconomies of extraction imposed by the materiality of biophysical nature?
2. What are the core ideas, rationalities and discourses which produce and structure the spaces of mineral extraction on the Zambian Copperbelt?
3. Which tactics, mechanisms and strategies are used to translate these into governable spaces which enable the long-term circulation of global capital through the Zambian underground?
4. How are these techniques and strategies implemented, resisted and contested by various groups and institutions?

Previous employment

(8/05 - 9/05) External Evaluator, SEEYN, South East Europe.

(5/03 - 8/05) Youth Policy Advisor, Forum Syd (PRONI). Belgrade, Serbia.

(4/02 - 12/02) Programme Coordinator, South Eastern European Youth Network, Mellemfolkeligt Samvirke, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina.

(10/01 - 3/02) International Volunteer, ADP-Zid. Podgorica, Montenegro.

(9/00 - 6/01) Conscientious objector, MS. Copenhagen, Denmark.

Funding

2006-2008 Marie-Curie International Reintegration Grant, European Commission Framework Programme 6: To the Ends of the Earth - Europe and the global expansion of mining investment at the end of the 19th century awarded to Dr. Gavin Bridge.