Mineral commons: Collective claims to territory in the goldfields of Madagascar

This paper examines how artisanal miners in northern Madagascar have contested state-corporate authority and staked claims to subterranean territory through the production and maintenance of goldfields as mineral commons. Drawing on ethnographic evidence collected over 15 months of field-based research, as well as interviews and archival data, I elaborate how community members in the diggings of Betsiaka have used commoning to resist subsoil enclosure, engender local autonomy, and secure collectivized access to gold as a basis for extended social reproduction. Constructing Betsiaka's mineral commons has relied on three overlapping yet distinct components: (1) the materiality or geological character of deposits, mediated through local understandings of gold's occurrence and (in)exhaustibility; (2) the socio-historical construction of discourse around resource access; and (3) the political-economic organization and management of the goldfields via sedimented institutions of governance. The paper's arguments challenge assumptions across varying domains of commons scholarship that tend to exclude resources deemed “nonrenewable” from discussions of commons, demonstrating both that socio-natural particularities can render mineral deposits effectively “inexhaustible,” and that even subsoil resources perceived as finite can be managed by community members to facilitate collective access and broadly-shared benefit. They furthermore contribute to ongoing discussions regarding territorialization and governance in extractive landscapes, adding commons and commoning to the list of tactics and instruments used by mining communities to avoid dispossession, order activities, and sustain livelihoods. Recognizing mineral commons in Betsiaka and beyond thus has significant implications for enhancing our understanding of local mineral politics—and also for rethinking approaches to formalization and decentralization.