Projeto Mineração — Ouro: a garimpagem e a mineração industrial

1994–1996 · IDRC · UFPA/NAEA · Senior Researcher · Gold Mining · Artisanal and Industrial Mining · Amazonia

Gold Mining · Garimpo · Industrial Mining · Labour Relations · Mineral Economy · Regional Transformation · Amazonia

Project Overview

Projeto Mineração — Ouro: a garimpagem e a mineração industrial was a research project developed at NAEA/UFPA with support from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC). The project extended earlier research on artisanal gold mining in Amazonia by introducing a systematic comparison between garimpagem and industrial gold mining.

The research began in 1994 and was concluded, in its principal research phase, in June 1996. Contemporary documentation identifies Franz Josef Brüseke as project coordinator and Armin Mathis and Franz Josef Brüseke as senior researchers. A subsequent research proposal explicitly describes the project as research conducted from 1994 to 1996 and identifies its results as the basis for the book Riqueza Volátil.

The project represented an important shift in my research trajectory. Earlier work had concentrated predominantly on artisanal gold mining, its labour relations, social organization and environmental consequences. Projeto Mineração broadened this perspective by asking how different forms of mineral extraction were organized and how artisanal and industrial mining became connected to wider economic and regional processes.

A central comparative question was:

How do artisanal and industrial forms of gold mining differ in their organization and in their social, economic and regional consequences?

Research Context

Gold mining had become an important component of Amazonian economic transformation by the beginning of the 1990s.

Artisanal gold mining had expanded substantially during the preceding decades and generated distinctive labour relations, settlement patterns, commercial networks and forms of resource use. At the same time, industrial gold mining was becoming increasingly important.

The project emerged at precisely this transition.

Contemporary project documentation notes that industrial gold mining had previously played a comparatively limited role but was rapidly increasing its share of Amazonian gold production. This change justified moving beyond the study of garimpo alone toward a comparison between artisanal and industrial forms of extraction.

The research therefore addressed mineral extraction not as a homogeneous activity but as a field characterized by different technologies, forms of organization, labour relations and relationships with markets and regional environments.

From Garimpo to Comparative Mining Research

My earlier research had examined artisanal gold mining as a specific form of resource extraction in Amazonia.

That work addressed questions including:

labour relations and working conditions;
social actors involved in garimpo;
technological practices;
environmental consequences;
state policies toward artisanal mining;
connections between mining, regional economies and national development strategies.

Projeto Mineração extended this research by introducing industrial gold mining as a comparative reference point.

This comparison made it possible to ask whether differences in scale, technology, capital intensity and organizational structure also produced different relationships with workers, public institutions, markets and regions.

The analytical focus consequently shifted from:

How is garimpo organized?

toward the broader question:

How do different forms of mineral extraction become organized and consequential within Amazonian society and economy?

Artisanal and Industrial Gold Mining

The project compared two markedly different forms of mineral extraction.

Artisanal and Small-Scale Gold Mining

Garimpo involved flexible and frequently decentralized forms of production, heterogeneous labour relations and networks connecting miners, equipment owners, traders, service providers and local economies.

Its organization was strongly influenced by the material characteristics of mineral deposits, technological possibilities, mobility and changing gold prices.

Garimpo also generated significant environmental and social consequences and posed recurring problems for public regulation.

Industrial Gold Mining

Industrial mining was characterized by substantially higher capital requirements, formal corporate organization, greater technological intensity and stronger integration into national and international investment and commodity markets.

Its growing importance raised different questions concerning employment, corporate organization, regional economic linkages, environmental impacts and relations between mining enterprises and public authorities.

The comparison therefore moved beyond a simple distinction between “formal” and “informal” mining. It examined different organizational forms of extraction and the social and regional relations associated with them.

Mining and Regional Transformation

An important development during the project was the gradual expansion of the research problem from the organization of extraction toward the relationship between mining and regional transformation.

Mineral extraction generates economic activity, but the existence of mineral resources does not by itself determine the developmental consequences of mining.

Different forms of extraction interact differently with:

labour markets;
settlement and migration;
regional commerce;
infrastructures;
public institutions;
environmental conditions;
national and international mineral markets.

This raised questions that became increasingly important in my subsequent research:

Under what conditions does mineral extraction generate lasting regional economic and institutional effects?

and

Why can substantial mineral extraction coexist with limited regional-development benefits?

These questions provided an important bridge toward my subsequent research on mining, sustainability and regional development.

Mining, Markets and the State

The project also continued earlier research on the relationship between artisanal mining and public policy.

My preceding work had already examined garimpo as an object of state policy, particularly in the Tapajós region. Publications and research activities from this period addressed political regulation, labour relations, environmental consequences and the position of gold mining within wider processes of Amazonian development.

The comparison with industrial mining widened this problem.

Industrial mining involved corporations with different organizational capacities, access to capital and relationships with national and international markets. This made the role of public policy increasingly relevant not only as regulation of mining activity but also as an attempt to influence the developmental consequences of mineral extraction.

The question was therefore no longer simply how the state regulated garimpo, but how different forms of mining became connected to public policy and regional development.

Research Approach

The project combined empirical mining research with comparative and documentary analysis.

Research activities included:

analysis of artisanal gold mining and its organizational structures;
comparative analysis of artisanal and industrial forms of extraction;
research on labour relations and socioeconomic conditions;
analysis of environmental consequences of gold mining;
examination of mineral markets and economic relations;
analysis of public policies directed toward mining;
field-based research and documentation;
integration of students into mining-related research activities.

The project was embedded in the postgraduate research environment of NAEA/UFPA and contributed to the consolidation of mining as a longer-term research field within the institution.

Later programme documentation explicitly described the subsequent Estratégias de Sustentabilidade programme as a continuation and expansion of Projeto Mineração and identified Armin Mathis and Franz Josef Brüseke as the senior researchers of the preceding project.

My Role

I participated in Projeto Mineração as a Senior Researcher.

My research focused particularly on artisanal gold mining and on the comparative expansion of this work toward industrial mining.

The project continued research that had begun with my doctoral work on non-industrial gold mining in Amazonia and provided the institutional setting for broadening this research toward questions of:

different forms of mineral extraction;
labour and social organization;
regional economic relations;
environmental consequences;
state intervention;
industrial mining;
regional development.

The research subsequently became an important basis for a wider programme concerned with mining and sustainable development.

Selected Project-Related Output

Riqueza Volátil. A mineração de ouro na Amazônia

Mathis, A., Brito, D., & Brüseke, F. J. (1997). Belém: CEJUP.

The July 1996 proposal for the subsequent mining-and-sustainable-development research explicitly states that the results of the 1994–1996 comparative research would be published in Riqueza Volátil.

The book therefore represents the clearest documented publication outcome of Projeto Mineração.

At the same time, it formed part of a broader research trajectory on gold mining that had begun before the project. It should therefore be understood as both an outcome of the comparative mining research and a synthesis of accumulated research on artisanal and industrial gold mining in Amazonia.

Contribution to My Research

Projeto Mineração represents an important transition in my research trajectory.

In retrospect, three developments were particularly significant.

From Garimpo to Mining

The project broadened the object of research from artisanal gold mining toward mining as a differentiated economic and organizational field.

This made it possible to compare distinct forms of extraction rather than treating garimpo as an isolated phenomenon.

From Extraction to Regional Effects

The comparative perspective increasingly raised questions about how different forms of mining interacted with regional economies, institutions and populations.

The research thus began to move from the organization of mineral extraction itself toward the wider consequences of mining for regional development.

From Mining Research to Sustainability

The project also exposed a problem that became explicit in the research programme that followed it: mineral extraction could generate substantial economic value without necessarily producing durable developmental benefits for resource-producing populations.

The 1996 proposal for Mineração e Desenvolvimento Sustentável explicitly took this problem as one of its points of departure, noting both the growing importance of mining in Amazonia and doubts concerning the capacity of public policy to transform mineral extraction into lasting benefits.

From Projeto Mineração to Estratégias de Sustentabilidade

The relationship between Projeto Mineração and the subsequent Estratégias de Sustentabilidade programme is unusually well documented.

The programme proposal describes itself explicitly as both a continuation and an expansion of Projeto Mineração. It identifies the earlier project as the research context from which the new integrated programme emerged and names Armin Mathis and Franz Josef Brüseke as its senior researchers.

The transition involved a substantial broadening of the research problem.

Projeto Mineração had compared artisanal and industrial gold mining.

The subsequent subproject Extração Mineral e Desenvolvimento Sustentável asked more generally how mining could be connected to sustainable regional development, public policy and durable benefits for Amazonian populations.

The relationship between the two projects can therefore be summarized as:

Garimpo → Comparison of Artisanal and Industrial Mining → Mining and Regional Development → Mining and Sustainability

This sequence constitutes one of the clearest historical trajectories within my research on extractive transformations.

Relation to Regional Development in World Society

Projeto Mineração predates the development of Regional Development in World Society (RWS) by many years and should not be interpreted as an early application of the current theoretical framework.

Its relevance is genealogical.

Viewed retrospectively, the project began to raise questions that later became important in a different theoretical vocabulary:

why similar resources can generate different regional consequences;
how organizational forms influence the effects of extraction;
how world-market relations become consequential within particular regions;
how political intervention interacts with economic processes;
how material conditions shape but do not determine social development;
how external economic processes become connected to historically structured regional contexts.

These questions were not yet formulated through the concepts of selective territorialization, regionalization or world-societal differentiation.

Their significance lies instead in the research problems from which later theoretical developments emerged.

Retrospective analytical relevance:
Mining · Organizational Forms · Labour Relations · World-Market Integration · Public Policy · Material Conditions · Regional Transformation

The relationship to RWS is therefore one of research genealogy rather than theoretical continuity.