Leviathans at the Gold Mine

Golub's study of gold mining in Papua New Guinea is not only a fascinating ethnography but a strong tonic for anthropology, for law and courts, and for governments and corporations insofar as they continue to subscribe to the notion of fixed indigenous 'societies' and 'cultures'--or truly of any social facts or institutions that they dream have been or can be settled once and for all through the (post)modern techniques of audit and governmentality. -- Jack David Eller Anthropology Review Database Golub's chapter on the Ipili is an ethnographic tour de force. -- Martha MacIntyre Current Anthropology Leviathans at the Gold Mine truly does justice to Porgera's complex reality. The author's theoretically ambitious approach provides a sophisticated and refreshing perspective on the constantly evolving relationship between mining companies and local communities. It is accessible to multiple audiences and is a go-to book for anyone interested in mining, governmentality, Melanesian anthropology or globalisation. With a variety of writing genres displayed in each chapter - all written in Golub's clear, witty and at times poetic style - Leviathans is a pleasure to read. -- Shaun Gessler Journal of Pacific History Golub benefits from and contributes to a long conversation with fellow anthropologists who have been working in the area for several decades (Biersack, Burton, Filer, Jorgensen, and others) and who constitute another kind of grouping with blurred boundaries, variable ties, and internal controversies, which ultimately appears to be as feasible as the Ipili. -- Pierre-Yves Le Meur American Anthropologist Leviathans at the Gold Mine is a game-changing work. Any one of its chapters would be enough to secure its place as a breakthrough book, but the ensemble is a tour de force of the sort that comes along only rarely. Future debates about the politics of resource development or the relation between the states, transnational corporations, and indigenous people will have to start here. Theories about globalization, structure, and agency will have to take it into account. And the bar of Melanesian ethnography has just been raised. -- Dan Jorgensen, University of Western Ontario Leviathans at the Gold Mine is an important contribution to our knowledge of the Porgera mine and mining in Papua New Guinea more generally. Alex Golub offers a subtle, original reading of mine-landowner relations, as well as new information about the microprocesses associated with Porgera mining, such as how landownership is determined and how royalty checks are distributed. Those insights will be welcomed by scholars interested in local-global articulations and the politics and misunderstandings associated with them. -- Aletta Biersack, coeditor of Reimagining Political Ecology