Extraction, Global Commodity Trade, and Urban Development in Zambia’s Northwestern Province: An Ethnography of Inequality and Interdependence

Rita Kesselring provides a compelling ethnographic account of the wildly uneven, deeply interconnected development trajectories of Solwezi, a copper mining town in Zambia, and Zug, an urban hub for metal trading firms in Switzerland. In so doing, she provides a valuable open access case study of the unequal interdependencies that global capitalism creates between towns and cities in the Global North and Global South.

Through detailed storytelling, Kesselring explores the lives and routines of state officials, residents, mine managers, and mine employees in Solwezi. From there, she follows Solwezi’s copper as it makes its way through shipping, financing, and trading. Highlighting the key actors in this value chain, Kesselring reveals not only the central role Switzerland plays in Southern Africa’s mining industry, but also the central role that Southern Africa plays in Switzerland’s status as a leading service commodity trading hub- thanks primarily to the constant flow of wealth from Zambia to Switzerland.

What emerges from this detailed portrait of inequitable interdependencies is a new way forward. It is only through joint solidarity action between such vastly different but inherently connected places, Kesselring argues, that the world can arrive at more equitable North-South economic relationships.

The ebook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com.

Rita Kesselring is Associate Professor of Urban Studies at the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland. Her academic work focuses on the intersections of political, economic, legal and urban anthropology. She is the author of Bodies of Truth: Law, Memory and Emancipation in Post-Apartheid South Africa (2017).