Under Pressure

Told from the vantage point of the "Hub of the North," this student-friendly ethnography examines the boom and bust of Canada’s diamond industry.

Lindsay A. Bell is an assistant professor of anthropology at Western University.

"By showing how everyday lives in a northern town become tied to the promises and disappointments of short-lived mega projects, Bell deftly diagnoses a fundamental flaw in contemporary extractive projects and job training programs. Under Pressure is exactly the kind of accessible and innovative scholarship that Canadians need right now to understand the toll that ‘ethical mining’ is taking on northern communities, including would-be migrants imagining hopeful futures for themselves in these places, and the disillusioned others struggling to leave."

Elizabeth Emma Ferry, Brandeis University:

"This well-researched ethnography disrupts the notion that indigeneity and mobility are incompatible. Bell shows that issues surrounding extraction have to be seen in a broader context, both topically and historically. This is an important contribution to the ethnographic literature on mining, and one that can be easily missed in anthropology classes. Looking at dimensions of extraction that have not much been considered, Under Pressure shows a complex phenomenon in an accessible way."