Matthieu Bolay

Matthieu Bolay
HES-SO University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western Switzerland · CERES - Centre de recherche sociale

Phd

About

34
Publications
5,673
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425
Citations
Additional affiliations
September 2021 - present
University of Bern
Position
  • Senior Researcher

Publications

Publications (34)
Article
Full-text available
Cet article interroge les recompositions récentes du champ du commerce de l’or au Mali (à Bamako) à la lumière de la compétition à laquelle se livrent des comptoirs d’exportation et des raffineries pour l’acquisition et la commercialisation d’or issu des mines artisanales dans un contexte de crise politique. Les stratégies contrastées des comptoirs...
Article
Full-text available
Since the rise of the gold price in 2000, artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) is a growing economic activity in developing countries. It represents a source of income for several millions of people in West Africa. Exploitation techniques have evolved from traditional gold panning to mechanization and use of chemical products that are harmf...
Chapter
Full-text available
Mineral extraction challenges dryland farming and pastoral communities and impacts socioeconomic opportunities, health, and environmental productivity. Mining in the global South seldom recognizes customary land and resource rights and disrupts pastoral transhumance patterns, with significant implications for residents and communities. This chapter...
Article
Full-text available
The expansion of gold mining in West Africa transforms miners’ relations to space and time as they move frequently from one mining site to the next. Whereas labor, reproduction, and social integration are expected to be durably organized through the social institutions of marriage, mentorship, and friendship, itinerant miners recast these instituti...
Article
Full-text available
Cet article analyse les conditions de responsabilité de la chaîne d’appro- visionnement de l’or importé et affiné en Suisse. Partant du paradoxe que constitue le rôle de garant joué par un secteur qui procède dans le même temps à effacer les traces du passé potentiellement litigieux de l’or, il examine les luttes et les enjeux juridiques au travers...
Article
Full-text available
This article examines the growing corporate reliance on artisanal labour in the cobalt mines of the Democratic Republic of Congo. This shift from autonomous miners to corporate contractors, we suggest, holds historical significance and augurs a radical break with contemporary modes of extractive production. Under the banner of “responsible mining,”...
Book
Full-text available
This special issue explores the paradoxical intersection between the cultivation of a cosmopolitan ethos and processes of socio-spatial boundary work and segregation. As this volume’s ethnographic case studies show, a focus on the spatial grounding of the political and economic projects where cosmopolitan claims are concretized highlights counterin...
Book
Full-text available
Dis/connection Matters Natural, Synthetic, Digital Matières à dé/connexion naturel, synthétique, digital Getrennt/verbunden natürlich, synthetisch, digital 26/2021 TSANTSA Dis/connection Matters: Natural, Synthetic, Digital Matières à dé/connexion : naturel, synthétique, digital Getrennt/verbunden: natürlich, synthetisch, digital Journal Editors/Re...
Article
Full-text available
This article situates international expatriate schools in their cultural and political economy by drawing attention to the tensions between a cosmopolitan educational ethos and processes of social, economic and legal enclavement. Based on extensive multi-sited ethnographic research in the international school sector, we show how cosmopolitan claims...
Article
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Cosmopolitan enclaves emerge at the intersection of global dynamics and local contexts as spaces where the cultivation of a cosmopolitan ethos encounters processes of socio-spatial boundary work and segregation. In the introduction to this special issue, we discuss under which circumstances the intention to cultivate open-mindedness goes hand in ha...
Article
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Gold refineries are under pressure to revise their understanding of "integrity" beyond the physical cohesion of gold products, in order to integrate supply chain due diligence on human rights, labour conditions, and conflict financing as part of what can be coined the ethical integrity of gold. This article interrogates how processes of erasure, th...
Article
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The world is experiencing new relations and transformations between natural, synthetic, and digital substances. Rather than considering these as materially distinct or ontologically separate, this Special Issue of TSANTSA interrogates how they are interlocked in socio-material processes of mediation, transmutation, and valuation. By conceptualizing...
Article
Full-text available
The consumption of cobalt has tripled globally over the last decade, largely driven by rising demand for electronics and electric-battery vehicles. This fast-growing market has pressured multinational mining companies operating in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the world's largest supplier of cobalt, to formalize artisanal mining under the banne...
Article
Full-text available
Going beyond a static conceptualization of the mining enclave, recent research increasingly scrutinizes the role of corporate social responsibility (CSR) schemes as a means of territorial entanglement. Several authors refer to the notion of the "corporate gift" to describe these control and coping strategies as well as the resulting power relations...
Article
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This article scrutinizes the trajectories of African men whose cross-border movements intersect two types of mobility routes: mining and migration routes. Drawing on field research in Mali and Guinea, as well as phone interviews with male miners/migrants in North Africa and Europe, this article provides a case to empirically question some of the pr...
Technical Report
Full-text available
iMoMo - Gestion locale de la ressource en eau à travers la récolte de données issues de technologies conçues avec ses utilisateurs.
Technical Report
Full-text available
[für Deutsch, s. unten] La Suisse joue un rôle clé dans le commerce mondial d’or en tant que principal pays hôte des activités d’affinage. Les importations d’or, en particulier d’or minier, présentent un important risque d’atteinte aux droits humains ou à l’environnement. Jusqu’ici, les autorités fédérales ont misé sur l’autoréglementation : elles...
Article
Full-text available
L’engagement d’enseignants formés à l’étranger (EFE) représente une stratégie mobilisée par les autorités scolaires afn de répondre à une pénurie d’enseignants. Cet article se propose d’analyser les trajectoires d’insertion professionnelle des EFE engagés dans un canton suisse (Fribourg) à partir de la question de la reconnaissance professionnelle....
Article
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The 'migration journey' has proven to be a fruitful lens to question the simplistic notion that the outcome of migration solely depends on a momentous go/no-go decision in the countries of origin. At the same time, we argue that the normative/sedentarist principles of migration studies produce the risk to approach the journey as an exceptional phas...
Article
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Sur la base d'une étude ethnographique de l’apprentissage de l’évaluation des diamants taillés dans des laboratoires de gemmologie en Belgique et en Inde ainsi que d'entretiens avec des évaluateurs novices et chevronnés (Belgique, États-Unis, Inde, Royaume-Uni, Suisse), cet article propose la notion de réfraction visuelle pour analyser la construct...
Article
This article puts forth the notion of visual refraction to analyze the subjective and technical construction of grading certificates in the global diamond trade. Research was based on an ethnographic study of rough diamond grading and evaluation courses in gemological laboratories in Belgium and India, as well as interviews with novice and experien...
Article
Full-text available
This article puts forth the notion of visual refraction to analyze the subjective and technical construction of grading certificates in the global diamond trade. Research was based on an ethnographic study of rough diamond grading and evaluation courses in gemological laboratories in Belgium and India, as well as interviews with novice and experien...
Article
Full-text available
Recent decades have seen an exponential growth in the field of international schools, and a concurrent rise in the number of young Anglo-Saxon teachers overseas. Such mobile teaching careers have largely been presented in terms of emphasising exploration, travel and lifestyle-related migration. While acknowledging such factors, we also draw attenti...
Article
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This article explores the subjective spatial relations that international schools in Switzerland seek to produce within the cosmopolitan enclaves they form. Based on ethnographic fieldwork at 21 international schools in Switzerland, we scrutinize practices related to diversity and mobility, which international schools construe as the main vehicles...
Article
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Schools are places where specific temporalities are enacted daily through teaching practices both inside and outside the classrooms. This paper, which draws on ethnographic research in more than fifteen international private schools in Switzerland, looks at the accelerated temporality that prevails in these schools. International private schools ha...
Chapter
Ce texte interroge les contextes et modalités du recours à la catégorie de l’‘international’ par des écoles privées en Suisse. À partir d’observations ethnographiques et de référence à des travaux historiographiques, nous dégageons l’hypothèse de trois modalités d’agencement institutionnel de l’‘international‘ dans ces établissements, renvoyant à d...
Article
Full-text available
This article explores of how competencies learned in international schools contribute to the legitimization of future international leaders in the business, governmental, and non-governmental sectors. It focuses on the practice of “service learning”, a central element of the International Baccalaureate Programme. Based on an ongoing ethnographic re...
Chapter
Full-text available
This chapter aims to understand the particularities of the anthropotechnological approach in order to combine the ethnographic, bureaucratic and productive temporalities at work in the realization of projects aligned with this approach. Based on the case of an international cooperation project concerning sociotechnological innovation in matters of...
Article
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Ce chapitre aborde l'extraction minière en Afrique de l'Ouest sous l'angle de la mobilité des chercheurs d'or. Il s'intéresse en particulier à l'émergence de modes de vies itinérants dans le secteur des mines d'or artisanales. Je défends l'idée que malgré les risques encourus et l'incertitude des revenus des mines, lors des premières années, les or...
Article
Full-text available
Drawing on ethnographic research and problem-centered interviews in Guinean mining areas, this paper presents a comparative reading of the conflicting conceptions of what constitutes a “mining community.” First, I explore how independent artisanal miners describe and identify their activity. The weight of autochthony conventions is discussed concer...
Article
Based on ethnographic research in Malian and Guinean gold mining areas, this paper proposes a comparative reading of conflictive conceptions of what is a “mining community”. First, I explore how itinerant artisanal miners describe and identify to their activity. The weight of autochthony conventions is discussed. Secondly, I focus on the case study...

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