While an expanding literature has documented the economic upsurge of artisanal mining, this book is the first to explore its societal impact in detail. It demonstrates that, as a mode of mineral production, artisanal mining has the potential to be far more democratic and emancipating than preceding modes. It explores the paradoxes of this mode of mineral production alongside the expansion of large-scale mining investment in Africa, focussing on the Tanzanian experience. It considers how artisanal mining is configured in relation to local, regional and national mining investments, wealth accumulation and social class differentiation emanating from it. It focuses on work lives, mobility, and associated lifestyles of miners and people in mining settlements, asking where this historical interlude is taking them, their communities and countries in the future. The question of value transfers out of the artisanal mining sector, value capture by elites and changing configurations of gender, age and class differentiation all arise.

1. Introduction: Africa's New Mining Era and the Rise of an Artisanal Mining Social Practice Part 1: Miners' Agency and Social Relations 2. Going for Gold: Miners' Mobility and Motivation 3. Pursuing an Artisanal Mining Career: Downwards to Success 4. Loosely-woven Love: Sexuality and Wifestyles in Gold-Mining Settlements 5. Beyond Belief: Mining, Magic and Murder in Sukumaland Part 2: Mining Communities and Social Organizational Constructs 6. Property, Kin and the Social in Neoliberal Artisanal Mining 7. Ubeshi: Negotiating Artisanal and Large-scale Co-existence in Diamond Mining Part 3: Environmental, Trade, Regulatory and Development Policy Issues 8. Hazards of the Trade: Occupational and Environmental Adversities of Artisanal Mining 9. Handling Uncertainty: Policy and Practice Among Artisanal Gold Miners 10. The Ethical Turn in Artisanal Mining Policy: Issues and Implications for Fairtrade Gold 11. The Politics of Foreign Direct Investment: What Future for Artisanal Mining? Part 4: Conclusion 12. Artisanal Miners as a New Social Force

Deborah Fahy Bryceson is a Reader at the Geographical and Earth Sciences School of the University of Glasgow.

Eleanor Fisher is Senior Lecturer in International Development at Swansea University.

Jesper Bosse Jønsson works as Research Fellow at the School of Geographical and Earth Sciences at the University of Glasgow.

Rosemarie Mwaipopo is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.