Eric Balcom

Portrait of Eric Balcom
Bio

My research focuses broadly on the labor process tradition using historical materialism as an interpretive framework. Specifically, my research will be ethnographic and participant observation in artisanal gold mines in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. The issues that surround and inform labor and work that I'm interested are: resource extraction; questions of identity resulting from the production of culture relating to gender and masculinity; political ecology; and the production of space.