The secret and gendered lives of the underground

Abstract

The underground—for decades the invisible ‘other’ of landscape and terrain in geography—has emerged in political ecology literature as the source of ‘stuff’, or material things, resources and commodities that are not deemed intrinsically valuable until extracted. As a corrective, this paper offers a feminist political ecology perspective that brings subaltern women’s voices to the forefront, and argues that the underground is co-constituted as a gendered space by gendered humans. As evidence, I take the readers on a journey into the belly of a coalmine where humans labour, and bring out women’s voices that narrate their experiences and imaginations to create the underground as a space teeming with social life. These alternative and gendered narratives reinstate the diverse, complex, and secret lives of this netherworld, draw attention to the politics of imagining space, and potentially shift geographers’ focus to interpreting the underground as a gendered social space.

Keywords:

• Feminist political ecology
• gendered spaces
• India
• underground collieries
• underground space

Acknowledgements

This paper was first presented at the ‘Geoimaginaries’ workshop, organised by Professor Gavin Bridge and Magdalena Kuchler, in Stockholm in 2019. I thank the participants for their constructive comments on an earlier version of this paper. I also thank Prof Kenneth Dean, a Sinologist based at the National University of Singapore, for guiding me through the maze of Chinese literature on the underground, and Tim LeCain for exposing me to his work. Finally, I thank two anonymous and insightful reviewers for their comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Mining engineers have noted that when the weight of rocks causes a lower layer, which holds the roof, to shift, a faint rumbling, or ‘roof talk’, may be heard.

2 Clay pellets are used in stuffing explosives for blasting coal.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt

Kuntala Lahiri-Dutt is a Professor at the Australian National University, Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU College of Asia and the Pacific. She has researched the length and breadth of social and ecological aspects of resources, in particular, both large, industrial, and informal, artisanal and small-scale mines and quarries, water resource management, and feminization of agriculture in rural communities. Kuntala has research experience in South Asian countries, as well as in Indonesia, Lao PDR, Papua New Guinea and Mongolia. Currently, Kuntala is researching how global coal sector transition can be gender-just, instead of adding the economic, social and political burdens on women in coal reliant communities, with special emphasis on Global South countries. More information about Kuntala can be gleaned from her staff page: https://crawford.anu.edu.au/people/academic/kuntala-lahiri-dutt.