Event overview
Goldsmiths Anthropology Seminar Series
Gifting luck: The generativity of action among artisanal gold miners in Cameroon
This paper explores the generative potential of action through an ethnographic examination of luck (‘desonti’) among artisanal miners in the East Region of Cameroon, where Gbaya communities have extracted gold since its discovery by French colonial mining companies in the 1930s. I show how luck emerges from every day and ritualized forms of gift-giving with kin, notably through food offerings to children and ancestors, and in turn animates the material and value transformations within extraction, determining the success of mining. By tracing the transmission of luck, and the transformation of food into luck and then gold, within these practices, I argue that luck is a generative, vital and relational force that is both produced through human action and renders it efficacious. In doing so, I consider how the vernacular Gbaya category of ‘luck’ blurs the analytical boundaries between exchange, ritual and technical acts. By focusing on how the unpredictable production of gold in mining underscores the limits of human agency, I consider how luck provides an alternative agentive framework for Gbaya miners, and is itself based on a generative mode that unsettles the Euroamerican model of ‘production’.
This seminar is part of the Goldsmiths Anthropology Seminar Series. Seminars are free and open to all, no booking required.
This seminar is in person only.
Dates & times
| Date | Time | Add to calendar |
|---|---|---|
| 7 Dec 2022 | 4:00pm - 6:00pm |
Accessibility
If you are attending an event and need the College to help with any mobility requirements you may have, please contact the event organiser in advance to ensure we can accommodate your needs.
