Relational Displacement and the Colonial Legacies of Copper Mining in the Kalahari Copperbelt Region of Botswana

Abstract

Displacements are understood as having wide-ranging impacts on livelihoods and community access to resources. Using interviews and oral histories of farmers displaced by a copper mine in Botswana, the research described here demonstrates that displacement not only changes lived experiences of those who are displaced, but also has broad relational impacts by dispersing displaced people's family members and neighbors, disenfranchising farmers from their cattle and land, shifting the ways that human-wildlife conflict plays out, and creating a new and disruptive relationship between cattle farmers and the mining industry. Postcolonial and Indigenous scholars have long written about human-animal kinship and ongoing colonial and capitalist relations that weave (sometimes disparate) communities closer together or further apart. The work described here demonstrates that this knowledge allows for a clearer understanding of how displacement impacts the material and relational worlds of people and nonhumans displaced by the disruptive forces of resource development.