Mining and Men in Mutiara Hitam

While the days of coal extractions and hardworking miners seem to cease in Europe, the formation of new mining masculinities takes place in the east. In Indonesia coal seems to be a promising driver of development to fuel the countries energy supply and exports. While the impact of mining on environmental degradation and land right struggles has been discussed in multiple works, the question still remains on how mining together with Corporate Social Responsibility practices changes local masculinities and the social construction of gender. While the terms of mining and masculinities have been strongly interlinked in western societies, the question arises of how this impacts remote regions in Indonesia that have lived on largely self-subsistent livelihoods.
Alessandro Gullo answers these questions by taking a more holistic approach in engaging in gender as well as masculinity theory in order to shed light on the formation of new masculinities and gender role developments in the vast forest regions of Borneo.