Extracting modernity: Tin mining, colonial legacies, and the persistence of extractive inequality in bangka belitung

Abstract

This paper examines the enduring colonial legacies embedded in the tin mining industry of Bangka and Belitung, Indonesia. While tin is increasingly framed as essential to global sustainability transitions, particularly in the Global North, this paper argues that such narratives obscure the structurally unequal and environmentally destructive realities of extraction. Drawing on historical and contemporary accounts, it traces how colonial frameworks of resource control, racialised labour hierarchies, and ecological sacrifice persist into the present under the guise of green modernity. The study reveals how extractive inequality is sustained through institutional and discursive continuities. It situates Bangka and Belitung within a global value chain that continues to externalise environmental costs while centralising benefits elsewhere, revealing a deep contradiction at the heart of sustainability discourses. The paper calls for a decolonial approach to resource justice that recognises the knowledge, agency, and futures of communities historically marginalised by extraction.