Hannah Tubman

Despite formal closure of Broken Hill, a zinc-lead mine, in Kabwe, Zambia in 1994, residents continue to experience lead poisoning. A class-action lawsuit has been filed by residents against Anglo American South Africa, a former owner of the mine. Recently, a re-processing plant has been constructed near the mine. Re-processing is a mining industry strategy to re-convert mineral waste into a resource. However, what impact does re-mining have on communities in post-industrial, neo-extraction zones? Building on a rich anthropological history in Zambia, this study explores how post-industrial afterlives are experienced and managed amidst the slow violence of toxic legacies and emergent forms of extraction. With participant observation, interviews, and focus groups, there is the potential to understand the legal intelligibility and materiality of post-industrial afterlives to evaluate how the past is drawn on to build the future. This research is an important part of understanding green transitions as it contributes to a growing body of scholarship in anthropology, and social science broadly, providing critical perspectives on sustainability discourses. With mining communities, like Kabwe, at the center of these developments, it is important to understand community concerns about livelihoods, toxicity, and futurity in the face of environmental, economic, and social change.