Feminist perspectives on extractivism: South-South dialogue

Panelists: 

Hibist Kassa, Policy Interface Fellow, University of Leicester, UK

Grettel Navas, Assistant Professor, Political Science, Universidad de Chile, Santiago, Chile 

Nteboheng Phakisi-Portas, Researcher and community engagement officer at the Bench Marks Foundation
 

Organizers: 

Martina Angela Caretta, Associate Professor, The Department of Human Geography , Lund University

Vasna Ramasar, Associate Professor, The Department of Human Geography , Lund University

 Discussants:

Vasna Ramasar

Yahia Mahmoud, Senior Lecturer, The Department of Human Geography, Lund University

If you are attending and want to participate in the fika – sign up here by October 30^th 
 

Programme

9.30 – 9.40 Welcome by Martina Angela Caretta 

9.40 – 10 Hibist Kassa: Social Reproduction, Ecological Crisis, and the State in Artisanal mining

10 – 10.20 Grettel Navas: Whose Evidence Counts? Gendered Exclusions over Pesticides Politics 

10.20 – 10.40 Nteboheng Phakisi-Portas: Women in the Shadows: Survival, Policing, and Informal Economies in Johannesburg’s Zama Zama Settlements  

10.40 – 11 Coffee break 

11 – 11.15 Vasna Ramasar comments 

11.15 – 11.30 Yahia Mahmoud comments

11.30 – 11.45 Panelists respond 

11.45 – 12.25 Questions from the public 

12.25 – 12.30 Closing by Martina Angela Caretta 

Panelists bios

Hibist Kassa  is Policy Interface Fellow at the Institute for Environmental Futures, University of Leicester. She is an associate editor with the Agrarian South Network Research Bulletin, a tricontinental network of researchers in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. Hibist was awarded a doctorate in Sociology from University of Johannesburg. She has worked in feminist organizations, networks and policy research institutes in Africa and beyond for over a decade. She has a forthcoming book on Petty Commodity Production and Petty Capitalism in Artisanal and Small-Scale Mining: A Comparison of Ghana and South Africa. She has published on academic and popular platforms on artisanal mining policy, land, social reproduction, gender and the political economy of natural resources.

Grettel Navas is a political ecologist working on environmental conflicts linked to toxic pesticide exposure in agrarian contexts. Her work also examines the role of environmental defenders in these conflicts, the forms of violence they face in their struggles and how environmental justice movements shape environmental policies. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Studies at the School of Government, University of Chile. She earned her PhD in Environmental Science and Technology from the Autonomous University of Barcelona. She holds a Master’s degree in Socio-Environmental Studies from FLACSO–Ecuador and a Bachelor’s degree in International Relations from the National University of Costa Rica. She is an active member of the Latin American Political Ecology Group (CLACSO) and part of the coordination team of the Environmental Justice Atlas (EJAtlas), a global initiative documenting environmental conflicts and resistance movements around the world.

Nteboheng Phakisi- Portas is a researcher whose work explores the intersections of land, livelihoods, and extractive economies. She holds an MSc in Geography and Development from Palacký University in the Czech Republic and a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. She is currently a researcher and community engagement officer at the Bench Marks Foundation. It is a faith-based organisation that monitors multinational corporations operating in Southern Africa and the rest of the African continent to ensure that they meet minimum social, environmental and economic standards. She works closely with mining-affected communities, both host communities facing environmental degradation and labour-sending regions shaped by South Africa’s migrant labour system. Her research and advocacy amplify community voices while challenging the disruptions extractivism causes to local knowledge systems, livelihoods, and ecologies.

Talks abstracts

Social Reproduction, Ecological Crisis, and the State in Artisanal mining – Hibist Kassa

This talk examines accumulation processes in artisanal mining, focusing on petty commodity production and petty capitalism, and its interaction with social reproduction. In this context, social reproduction compensates for the gaps left by the State and markets, while being shaped by coercive mechanisms embedded in mining regulations, social norms, and practices. These factors support the labour process in mineral extraction, particularly enabling the super-exploitation of labour—including women's care work—and contributing to environmental degradation. The tension between social reproduction in artisanal mining and the environmental destruction it accelerates stems from the pressure to maximize profits driven by capitalist accumulation, large-scale mining operations, and global market demand. 

Whose Evidence Counts? Gendered Exclusions over Pesticides Politics – Grettel Navas

This  talk will examines how “undone science” — the absence or neglect of research on certain harms — shapes struggles for recognition and redress in cases of pesticide contamination. Focusing on banana plantation workers in Nicaragua exposed to dibromochloropropane (DBCP), it analyses how scientific evidence linking the pesticide to male infertility became the central basis for claims, while women’s embodied experiences of illness, miscarriages, and long-term health effects were marginalized. Drawing on qualitative fieldwork, interviews, and archival research, the study highlights how the combination of scientific neglect and patriarchal dynamics within local workers’ organisations excluded women as recognised victims. Their contributions to sustaining the movement were acknowledged, but their voices and needs remained sidelined in both legal and political arenas. The talk will discuss for the need of gender-sensitive epidemiological research, legal frameworks, and mobilisation strategies that account for intersectional vulnerabilities in the increasingly chemical-based agrarian economies in particular in the economies from the Global South

The talk will be mostly based on this paper:
If there's no evidence, there's no victim’: undone science and political organisation in marginalising women as victims of DBCP in Nicaragua

Women in the Shadows: Survival, Policing, and Informal Economies in Johannesburg’s Zama Zama Settlements - Nteboheng Phakisi- Portas 

This paper explores the intersecting vulnerabilities of women Zama Zamas in Johannesburg’s transitional communities, focusing on Jerusalem as a case study. While much of the popular discourse on Zama Zamas centres on men, women’s experiences remain under-researched, particularly around issues of harassment, sexual violence, and their precarious position within networks of policing and immigration control. These women navigate a layered vulnerability: they are at once miners, caregivers, migrants, and targets of both state and community surveillance. Yet, beyond vulnerability, they are also central to sustaining the informal economies that allow communities like Jerusalem to survive. The renting of shacks, the circulation of money in local shops, and the provision of household labour and small-scale trade all hinge on the presence and participation of Zama Zamas, many of them women. By situating women at the intersection of gender, migration, policing, and informal economies, this paper rethinks transitional communities not simply as spaces of abandonment but as hybrid economies where survival depends on precarious gendered labour.