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Accepted Paper:

The story of a poisoned gift: a 15 years delay for a gold extraction project and their impact on Rosia Montana's small community in Romania  
Luminiţa-Anda Mandache (University of Salzburg)

Paper short abstract:

This paper analyzes the impact on the local community of a project of gold extraction in the Romanian mining village Rosia Montana. The research presents the multi-faced situation of a confused community, a multinational company waiting for more than 15 years for official approvals and the Romanian state, an actor among others- all under the critic look of the civil society and mass-media.

Paper long abstract:

After the closing of the state owned gold mine in the village of Rosia Montana in 1996, a foreign investor- GOLD Corporation- immediately showed up its interest for further extraction in the area. The new actor was representing both the Romanian state - in proportion of almost 20 per cent - and the Canadian consortium Gabriel Resources. The installation of the new actor in the area begun with a long series of investments - infrastructure, archeological and anthropological research - and the privatization process continued with a concession from the Romanian state, covering more than a half of the extracting area. Due to Romania's inconstant and incoherent political life, GOLD Corporation has never achieved the full official agreement giving permission to start the extraction process. Meanwhile, an opposition group reuniting several political influenced NGOs together with media groups, all encouraged by the Romanian office of the Soros Foundation, began an aggressive campaign in the area, accusing both the government and GOLD Corporation of corruption. A two weeks intensive group fieldwork in May 2010 in Rosia Montana finalized with an ethnographic movie on the same topic shows the picture of a split, confused, persecuted and tired of waiting community. « I always feel a pressure! Each day… each day… I'm telling you : people have changed in a bad sense since the investment has reinforced, from 2000 on. And this is not because people are different. It's because of this disarray, these continuous discussions and contradiction amplified by the outsiders » confesses Gheorghe Gruber, an ex-manager of the mine.

Panel P16
Applying anthropology in the extractive industries: making the discipline work for indigenous communities affected by multinational resource extraction
  Session 1