Contents lists available at ScienceDirect The Extractive Industries and Society journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/exis Original article Mining in comparative perspective: Trends, transformations and theories Jeroen Cuvelier a,b, ⁎ a Conflict Research Group, Department of Conflict and Development Studies, Universiteitstraat 8, Ghent University, 9000, Ghent Belgium b Institute for Anthropological Research in Africa, Parkstraat 45, Box 3615, Leuven University, 3000, Leuven Belgium ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Artisanal and small-scale mining Large-scale mining Elites Commodity frontiers Neo-extractivism Access Property rights Extraversion Capital accumulation ABSTRACT This article offers a brief introduction to a special issue based on a selection of papers originally presented at an international mining conference in Ghent (Belgium) in December 2017. The aim of the conference was to promote a comparative and multidisciplinary approach to a selective number of political, economic and socio- cultural aspects of mining in the Global South. The five papers included in the special issue have been grouped around three main themes: (1) mining elites, (2) the antagonism between artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) and large-scale mining (LSM), and (3) mining in a globalizing world. 1. Introduction The papers included in this special issue were originally presented at an international mining conference in Ghent on 13–14 December 2017. The aim of this two-day conference, hosted by the Conflict Research Group of Ghent University, was to take stock of a selective number of trends and developments in current research on the political, economic and socio-cultural aspects of mining in the Global South, bringing together scholars from different fields in the social sciences and the humanities, including political science, development studies, anthropology and history. The approach we sought to promote and stimulate was a comparative and multidisciplinary one. Without wanting to downplay the value of paying attention to historical and cultural specificities, we invited participants in this conference to cri- tically reflect on new and perhaps more fruitful ways to make theore- tical sense of mining-related structures, processes and practices that seem to occur in different settings, contexts and historical epochs. While conference participants were obviously free to rely on their own disciplinary knowledge and to draw on their familiarity with a given area and/or era, we also wanted to offer them the opportunity to leave their comfort zone and to engage in scholarly debate with colleagues working on other continents and/or writing from different theoretical perspectives. The idea for organizing this conference was born from a growing frustration about disciplinary insularity and theoretical narrow-mind- edness in some of the social-scientific research about mining. At the risk of using a worn-out cliché, mining scholars working in the social sci- ences and the humanities sometimes seem to suffer from tunnel vision. Apart from overestimating the uniqueness of the phenomena they are encountering in the field, they sometimes show a disturbing tendency to analyze empirical data from the same angles, only using the tried and tested theories of their respective disciplines and only attending con- ferences and workshops where they can meet colleagues having the same disciplinary background, working in the same geographical areas, or being specialized in the same types of mining or minerals. In that sense, they behave – ironically – somewhat like the miners whose lives and practices they are studying during fieldwork: people who spend a considerable part of their days working underground, where they are completely disconnected from what is happening in the outside world. The ambition of the conference was to break away from this scholarly tunnel vision. Five panels were convened by the members of the organizing committee 1 : (1) mining and urbanization, (2) mining and in- formalization, (3) mining-induced displacement and resettlement, (4) mining and violence, and (5) ASM in Central and Southern Africa. However, since only a limited number of paper presenters at the https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2019.03.009 Received 3 January 2019; Received in revised form 10 March 2019; Accepted 16 March 2019 ⁎ Correspondence to: Institute for Anthropological Research in Africa, Parkstraat 45, Box 3615, Leuven University, 3000, Leuven Belgium. E-mail addresses: jeroen.cuvelier@ugent.be, jeroen.cuvelier@kuleuven.be. 1 The organizing committee was composed of Jeroen Cuvelier (University of Ghent), Katja Werthmann (University of Leipzig), Karen Büscher (University of Ghent), Sara Geenen (University of Antwerp), Boris Verbrugge (University of Antwerp & University of Leuven), Judith Verweijen (University of Sussex), Koen Vlassenroot (University of Ghent), Steven Van Bockstael (University of Ghent), Gillian Matthys (University of Ghent), and Sabine Luning (Leiden University).