Extractivist Capitalism and Haunted Landscapes

A case study on gemstone mining in Zambia

Melissa Schwarz

When emeralds were first discovered in Zambia in the 1920s, in the present-day location of the biggest emerald mine in the world, the eventual redesign of the locality’s environment to enable the extraction of the valuable resource became inevitable. In 1980 a government-owned operation formally established a mine there and named it ‘Kagem’, combining the name of the region, Kafubu, and the word ‘gemstone’. From that point on, the extraction of gemstones would shape the future of the area. Kagem is now majority-owned (75%) by the British company Gemfields, while 25% is owned by the Zambian government (Gemfields, 2025). Thus, Gemfields, a British company, effectively majority-owns one of the most resource-rich pieces of land in Zambia. 

Since the mine’s founding, the many environmental alterations that are necessary for gemstone extraction have inflicted a forced redesign of the landscape. Natural ecosystems have given way to an industrial environment modified following the logic of globalised neo-liberal capitalism. Environmental historian and historical geographer Jason W. Moore writes that “Capitalism is not an economic system; it is not a social system; it is a way of organizing nature” (2015, p. 14). Capitalism utilises “organising tools” such as the extraction of natural resources to do this: gemstone extraction from mines offers a prominent example. 

Extractivism, particularly within the logic of neoliberal capitalism, is not simply about the removal of natural resources; it is a profound process of landscape redesign, one that reorganises economic, ecological, and social structures in its wake. As I will later describe in more detail, this redesign and its processes are haunted by what has been displaced, both materially and conceptually, in the present and the future. Extractivist landscapes are sites of spectral presences, ghostly absences and deferred futures. The Kagem Emerald Mine in Zambia exemplifies this dynamic. Here, the extraction of emeralds is an act of erasure, restructuring, and haunting.  

Capitalist extractivism and the logic of neo-liberal capitalism 

The Kagem emerald mine was privatised in 2000 and since then its transformation has followed the patterns and logic of neoliberal extractivism. Under Zambia’s previous socialist economic policies the state played a dominant role in the mining sector, but with the global turn toward neoliberal economic policies in the 1990s Zambian mining was opened to foreign direct investment (FDI), leading to Gemfields’s takeover. 

It is important to note that while Zambia’s socialist economic policies sought to nationalise wealth for the people, they ultimately failed, due to mismanagement, economic dependency on copper, and debt crises. (Gemfields Group Limited, 2025) Neoliberal privatisation did not solve these problems—instead, it introduced new ones. Kagem’s transition mirrors the broader neoliberal shift in the Global South, where states were pressured to deregulate, privatize, and liberalize their extractive industries to attract global capital (Bogert et all., p.12). It also moves localities further and further into globality; into a “different global reality in which we’ll all be competing with everyone, from everywhere, for everything” (Sirkin et al., p.1) 

Anthropocene or Capitolocene? 

Here, I need to acknowledge the context in which I have located this discussion. The Anthropocene is a common term used to describe the geological time we have been living in since the advent of capitalist industrialisation and human activity as a potent geological force (Crutzen and Stoermer, 2021). However, I agree with Jussi Parikka’s argument that the construct “might not be the best conceptual solution out there to solve the complex interlinks between scientific analysis of natural processes, political agendas, economic drives and the affective desire that still governs the very tightly fossil-fuelled state of the contemporary era” (Parikka, 2018, p. 53). Andreas Malm has suggested “Capitalocene” as an alternative conceptual name for the era, and when connected with extractivist processes such as the redesigning of land in order to dematerialise and transform it into ’financial products’, I find this a much more helpful framework. 

Jonathan Moore connects the Capitalocene’s extractive processes to systems of oppression, arguing that “they are also fundamental to capitalism’s political economy, which rests upon an audacious accumulation strategy: Cheap Nature. For capitalism, Nature is “cheap” in a double sense: to make Nature’s elements “cheap” in price; and also to cheapen, to degrade or to render inferior in an ethico-political sense, the better to make Nature cheap in price.” (Moore, 2016, p.2)  In mining areas, as sites of extraction, the ‘cheap nature’ rationale is predominant. It permeates the handling of the environment by people involved in the business on all levels. 

We need to acknowledge, as the historian of technology and landscape Anna Storm does, that "other kinds of values do compete in the continuous process of defining the landscapes and activities marked by mining. The economic logic is challenged by claims of significance connected to, for example, tradition and hope for the future, professional pride, perceptions of beauty, and places of home.” However, as Storm notes, “economic rationale has [so far] been supreme in the mining business, and deafness to other viewpoints has scarred both people and landscapes.” (Storm, 2014, p.21)  Within this process, as Gan, Tsing, Swanson and Bubant note, we face a “constant barrage of messaging asking us to forget – that is, to allow a few private owners and public officials with their eyes focused on short-term gains to pretend that environmental devastation does not exist.” (2017, p.G1) 

The redesigning of a landscape in the context of extraction of resources from nature serves the purpose of making-possible or optimizing the exploitation of a locality. Karen Bakker writes: “the intersections between neoliberalization and the environment are more than merely discursive, ideological, or political: they are deeply material. Neoliberalization, from a political ecology perspective, is co-constituted by evolving relationships with biophysical natures.” (2015, p. 446) In the wake of environmental transformation, a multitude of conflicts arise, and these can be environmental, social or political. Eyal and Ines Weizman argue that “much of the present level of human-material interaction is also the result of conflict. Conflicts in the Anthropocene might best be understood, not as battles taking place in the landscape, or even as wars fought for land, but rather as the process of making new lands.” (2014, p.26) Making new lands in order to exploit localities for resources is precisely what globalised capitalist extractivism is doing.  

Neoliberal extractivism is always forward-looking—it justifies itself through the promise of future development and prosperity. Gemfields, for instance, promotes the idea that Kagem’s activities contribute to national economic growth, job creation and sustainable mining practices (Gemfields, 2025). However, extractivist landscapes are often marked by a fundamental contradiction: while they claim to build the future, they often leave behind ruins that will haunt the land indefinitely.  

Extractivism as redesign 

The making of new landscapes, transformed from the state in which they were “found” by those seeking to extract resources and profit, can be understood as  redesign, or as a redesigning process. I believe understanding these processes as redesigning comes closer to what is actually happening; it is more than just a “making" of new lands. In the context of extractivism—especially when it comes to extraction sites like the Kagem Emerald Mine—the concept is helpful because it highlights the ongoing transformation of landscapes, economies and social structures, rather than simply describing extraction as a process of removal, a one-time or repeated act of taking resources from the earth. The term "redesign" recognises that extraction is part of a deliberate reconfiguration of land, labour and life itself under neoliberal capitalism. 

In the case of most ore mines, the redesign of landscape follows a pattern. First, the land is enclosed, converting previously communal or multipurpose land into a privately owned site to which only agents with permits have access: this was the case at Kagem. Following this, small-scale mining (such as the kind that had taken place at Kagem before Gemfields entered) is forced to give way to industrial, large-scale mining technology. This severs the local relationships with the land that existed before and leads to the restructuring of labour. Corporate entities usually introduce formal wage labour, leaving many small-scale miners unable to integrate into the new economic structure. Scholar of Marxism David Harvey calls this process of corporate dispossession of both public and private wealth in order to generate profit “accumulation by dispossession”, noting that it includes the “commodification of labour power and the suppression of alternative, indigenous, forms of production and consumption; colonial, neo-colonial and imperial processes of appropriation of assets, including natural resources; monetization of exchange and taxation, particularly of land”. (2022, p.74) 

David van Wyk describes the life cycle of mining thus: “[It] starts with exploration for exploitable deposits, often preceded by the forced removal (or forced sale) of those who own and/or occupy the land, followed by the construction of mining infrastructure, then the ‘productive phase’ of the mining of the ore and the extraction and beneficiation of the metal. The final closure of an exhausted mine theoretically includes the rehabilitation of the land, but this rarely occurs. Abandonment is more the norm, leaving a legacy of vast quantities of solid waste in the form of tailings (slimes) dams and waste rock, lakes of polluted water and a devastated environment, both above and below ground.” (2013, p.2). Applying Wyk’s cycle to the idea of redesign, it becomes clear that the redesign process is constant and ongoing, right up to and indeed beyond the point at which the mine, no longer able to expand and increase profit, is abandoned. Kagem’s altered landscape thus represents a neoliberal, capitalist redesign of the landscape. Land that before large-scale extraction served multiple purposes—agriculture, local settlement, traditional forms of resource use—was redesigned to serve a single goal: the maximisation of profit. 

To sum up, extractivism (the large-scale removal of natural resources) can be understood as a form of landscape redesign that reshapes not only the physical environment but also its ecological, economic, and socio-political dimensions. The process thereby reconstructs landscapes into industrial and post-industrial terrain, and often gives rise to hybridized environments that combine elements of both nature and industry. 

Extractivism as an unfinished process – environmental and social hauntings  

Extraction does not end when the mine is exhausted. Rather, it leaves behind a post-industrial landscape, a site where extraction lingers as an absent presence, shaping the land’s possible futures. Jacques Derrida introduced the term ‘hauntology’ in his 1993 book Spectres of Marx. Playing on the word “ontology", he describes hauntology as a means of understanding the present and future in which the past never fully disappears, but lingers, disrupting all spheres of life.  

He also suggests that hauntology’s temporality involves past events continuing to shape the present in both visible and invisible ways. "Time is out of joint. It is beside itself, disarticulated, dislodged, dislocated. It does not itself happen as an event, but it haunts. It is always already deferred, repeated, promised." (p. 82) Here, “promising" can be directly linked to the “progress” that neo-liberal capitalism promises, but never quite arrives at. According to Derrida, certain ideas, figures, and histories refuse to disappear or be buried—they return as ghosts, which also disrupt linear time. Key to Derrida’s book is the spectre of Marxism, which he argues still haunts globalised capitalism, shaping debates about justice and inequality even after the supposed "death" of communism (Derrida, 1993).  

Considering Derrida’s arguments, sociologist Avery Gordon notes that “there is room for the haunting to be taken as the un-actualized virtual (especially since the not presently there also refers to the not yet there), or simply as a “repressed or unresolved social violence,” an unexpected manifestation of an economic or social system whose gargantuan contours cannot be made out and so it is mistaken for absent.” (2018, p.64) Globalised neo-liberal capitalism certainly is one such economic or social system of gargantuan proportions; one, as cultural theorist Mark Fisher notes, is “abstract” (2009) and therefore difficult to grasp or—at the level of the ways in which its logic has permeated our realities—disentangle. 

Kagem’s future will be shaped by environmental hauntings, and it is interesting to apply the idea of hauntology to the previously discussed concept of landscape redesign, in order to understand the ways in which those hauntings might take place and what their implications are. Hauntology can be a helpful lens, because it “can be differentiated from a nostalgic yearning for lost pasts through its commitment to just futures. This is about more than simply “remembering” the past, even if unearthing hidden (repressed, occluded) histories is a vital first step in recognizing the continued power of the spectral across natural and cultural worlds.” (Sterling, 2021, p.81) 

In sum, the extraction of resources redesigns landscapes and in doing so it does not simply erase what was there, it leaves behind an altered site that is haunted by what has been lost. The emptied pits, abandoned settlements and disrupted ecosystems are ghostly reminders of the past, places where absence itself becomes a presence. The environment is turned into a space where capitalist power is both physical and spectral. 

At Kagem, firstly, we find the environmental degradation caused by open-pit mining. Deforestation has altered the local ecosystem in the form of a loss of biodiversity. The absence of the previously existing eco-system, of flora and fauna which have been displaced, creates what we could call a ‘void’. This displacement will eternally haunt the future of Kagem even if the restoration promised by Gemfields occurs. Any eco-system built on top of the old mine will not be the same, as it will have to adapt to changed conditions and a changed topography; many post-extraction landscapes never fully recover. 

Further, the area’s groundwater will also be haunted: pollutants and sediment introduced via the mining process will linger long after extraction has ceased. This phenomenon: environmental damages which accumulate over time, sometimes in invisible ways that are not immediately catastrophic and are therefore more easily dismissed or ignored, is what environmental theorist Rob Nixon calls “slow violence” (Nixon, 2011). 

With the changing of the whole ecology of the landscape, its original state and the possible futures that existed within it become an inaccessible past. We can call this “environmental haunting”. Once mining activities cease, due to exhaustion of the mine or some other reason, the repurposed land often struggles to regain its former use, leading to long-term social and economic disruptions (Gilberthorpe, 2016).  

As presented on its website, Gemfields’ engagement with this complex range of problems seems superficial, considering the measures demanded by genuinely responsible treatment of the environment. They state: “We are realistic and open about the impact of mining on the environment. Our mining operations are all open-pit, which means there are no caves, tunnels or mine shafts which often present unsafe conditions. Before mining, we collect seeds of indigenous plants and trees from the topsoil and create a seed bank. These plants grow in a nursery until they are strong enough for replanting. We save the nutrient-rich topsoil” (Gemfields, 2025).

The above are all good measures to mitigate the environmental impacts caused by the extraction of emeralds. However, as stated, Gemfield’s plan appears to be “surface level”: lacking deep investment in studying emerald mining’s long-term effects. Large-scale open-pit mines cannot be fully restored to their original state. The “nature” that might succeed the extraction will be forever altered by the mine’s activities. Gemfields clearly makes an effort to make reforestation of the area possible after mining activities cease, but its long-term strategies are arguably insufficient. 

This leaves behind a haunted environment in which the extractivist transformation of land has not simply erased what was there but has created a landscape inhabited by its own erasures, even after any projected restoration efforts have taken place. The futures that neo-liberal capitalism promised: a thriving local economy, a regenerated post-industrial landscape—often fail to materialise. 

The impact of extractive redesigning does not fall exclusively on the material environment. It also impacts local policies and laws. These have to adapt to deal with the impact extractivist activity has on the environment, and thus on local people’s lives. The adaptations themselves will persist in varying ways, continuing to shape the lives of people in the area. Conflict accompanies this process: “local chiefs deal with grievances, conflict and property issues, whilst Gemfields… take[s] on a pseudo-government role by investing in infrastructural development.” (Gilberthorpe, Agol and Gegg, 2016, p.4) This less-than-ideal redistribution of roles creates interdependencies: the Zambian government, for instance, relies in part on Gemfields to build infrastructure which is supposed to benefit the locals, such as building schools or health centres. On their website, Gemfields presents this as a ‘win-win’ situation, stating that they “are careful to ensure that the projects we support are those that, once established, the community and local government will be able to sustain and develop on their own into the future. We think it is important that communities have ownership of their means of income-generation, independent of the company" (Gemfields, 2025). However, we could see this as another form of haunting—this time, of the educational future of generations of locals. 

We have already noted how the redesign of Kagem’s landscape brought with it displacement, spectralisation and “accumulation by dispossession” (Harvey, 2022); how the transition from localised, small-scale mining to corporate-owned extractive production forced out small-scale emerald miners, and how local communities that had used the land for subsistence farming or informal mining found themselves excluded from spaces they had historically inhabited (Hilson, 2020). We should also note that former miners and displaced families often return to the mine’s periphery, along with migrant workers attracted by the mine’s employment possibilities, because they are unable to reintegrate into other economic systems (Gilberthorpe, 2016, p.5). Their physical exclusion from the mine site itself becomes a form of spectral presence. Many displaced miners attempt to return through informal mining, “including unlicensed artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) and the theft of minerals from concessions established by commercial mines” (Buxton, 2013 paraphrased in Gilberthorpe, 2016, p. 2). 

These excluded workers and displaced communities, absent from the corporate framework but engaged in the shadow economies that operate at the edges of official corporate structures such as Gemfields, are still very much a part of the mining landscape. Displaced and absent but nevertheless present at its edges, they constitute what we might call a “social haunting”. Their ghostly presence challenges the neoliberal notion that extractivist industries bring only “progress”. Instead, the mine’s economic success and post-industrial future is haunted by those it has excluded, and their continued suffering is a reminder of the slow violence inherent in landscape redesign under neo-liberal, globalised capitalism. 

Conclusion  

Neoliberal extractivism, characterised by deregulation, privatisation and the integration of local resources into global markets, has profoundly transformed Zambia’s mining sector. While socialist economic policies aimed to nationalise wealth for the people, their failure (due to economic dependency and mismanagement) paved the way for privatisation. However, this shift did not resolve existing structural issues; instead, it introduced new layers of exploitation. Gemfields’ entry into Zambia’s gemstone sector illustrates how foreign investment, under the guise of economic development, reinforces neo-liberal extractivist capitalism’s logic, rendering nature “cheap” and redesigning landscapes for maximal financial gain. 

Unlike the concept of the Anthropocene, which emphasizes human impact on the environment, the concept of the Capitalocene highlights capitalism’s systemic role in environmental degradation and social inequities. Mining landscapes, as sites of extraction, embody the “cheap nature” rationale. In such places, natural resources are commodified while alternative values such as ecological sustainability and community well-being are devalued. Gemfields markets its operations as contributing to national economic growth and responsible mining while covering up environmental degradation and social issues.  

The concept of hauntology provides a crucial framework for understanding the lasting impact of extractivism at Kagem. Unlike conventional analyses that focus solely on the economic or environmental consequences of mining, hauntology allows us to explore how past actions and lost futures continue to shape the present. As Derrida suggests, certain events do not simply disappear but persist as spectral presences that disrupt linear time and conventional narratives of progress. In the case of Kagem, the ghosts of extraction manifest in multiple ways - environmental degradation, displaced communities, and the unfulfilled promises of neoliberal capitalism. The repurposed land, the abandoned infrastructure, and the economic dependencies created by the mine ensure that even when extraction ceases, its spectres remain. 

Thus, Kagem is not merely a site of resource extraction; it is a haunted geography where the past, present, and future collide. The physical and social disruptions caused by mining will not end with the exhaustion of the emerald deposits, but will continue to shape the possibilities of what the land and its people can become. In this way, hauntology challenges the notion that extraction is a temporary phase, revealing it instead as an enduring force that structures both material realities and the imaginaries of the future. 

Recognising these hauntings is essential to disrupting the extractivist paradigm and forging alternative futures that honour both people and nature. Without a shift toward sustainable resource management, Zambia’s mining regions will remain spectral spaces. 

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Melissa Schwarz, Making gems, digital render, 2024