Patience Mususa - Why did flourishing communities start to crumble in the Zambian Copper Belt?

This month we are delighted to be joined by Patience Mususa from The Nordic Africa Institute. She is an anthropologist with a background in architecture working on mining and urbanization in Southern Africa. She is particularly interested in place and the ways in which people interact in the face of the large scale mining industry and the influence and ramifications of economic downturn and socio-economic transformation. In particular, she is interested in how space is produced, for example why we are so concerned with the idea of modernity and why we tend to use such energy intensive ways to produce place. She gave us insight into her research trajectory and how the different strands of her interests have come together. Part of her interest is rooted in the experience of growing up in a mining town in the Zambian Copperbelt in the height of corporate welfare industrialism and the ensuing changes stemming from the privatization of mining. Join us for this exciting conversation that gives insight into Zambian mining history, the changes that attend the modern era, and how sites of resource extraction are connected to areas of consumption through interlocking systems. 

If you are interested to learn more about Patience’s work, check out her academic profile (https://nai.uu.se/about-us/person/patience-mususa.html)

Check out Patience’s book There Used to be Order: Life on the Copperbelt after the Privatisation of the Zambia Consolidated Copper MInes (University of Michigan Press) (https://www.press.umich.edu/9441587/there_used_to_be_order) 

Some of the resources mentioned during the episode:

Expectations of Modernity by James Ferguson - Paperback - University of California Press (ucpress.edu)

UW Press - : Red Gold of Africa: Copper in Precolonial History and Culture, Eugenia W. Herbert (wisc.edu)

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