ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the emerging global governance regime on mining in terms of the 'evolutionary tropes' of development discourses that cohere through raced, gendered and sexualised meanings. It begins with an introduction to the emerging global regime on governing the extractives sector that is premised on state and corporate transparency and self-exposure and a dialectic between law and disorder. The chapter explores the sexualised dimensions of disorder as they are articulated in relation to the 'numerous negatives' often imputed to artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM). The focus of global regulation of mineral extraction comes to rest on the conditions for self-managed restraint of both artisanal miners and a global class of consuming subjects. The chapter also explores how sexual and gendered metaphors and norms, found in policy-level discourses as well as the social lives of artisanal mines, construct the sexual order of mining and its regulation.
