A geography of research on mining in Brazil in the field of geographical analysis (1987-2020)

Abstract

Economic activity based on mineral extraction has expanded, especially in the global South. In Brazil, mining is a secular economic activity and takes place in different formats, from mining to industrial size mineral extraction, presenting complexities and singularities. The phenomenon has been the object of scientific studies in several fields of knowledge. This research aimed to identify the theoretical-methodological approaches on extractive-mineral activity in the scope of Brazilian geography to know the state of the art in the field of geographic analysis. The research corpus consisted of 356 works, including theses and dissertations, produced in the last thirty-three years and collected from Capes' Open Data Portal. Data were collected and systematized through the categorization of studies, bibliometric and systematic content analysis. The results show that scientific production on mining, in Geography, grew after 2010 and, above all, after the last major disasters/crimes of mining in Minas Gerais (Mariana, 2015 and Brumadinho, 2019). The mapping showed that there is a predominance of studies carried out by Higher Education Institutions (HEI) in the Southeast region. From 2015 onwards, there is a greater presence of research in other regions, with a prevalence, in 2019, in HEIs in the Northeast. Theoretical-methodological variation of the analyses is noted, with alternation, over time, in the analytical approaches and categories of geographic science. In the last ten years, there has been a predominance of the Territory category in the identified studies. Understanding these and other issues in greater depth can be a way to expand the frontiers of knowledge about mining analysis in the light of Geography.

Keywords: State of the Art; Mining; Mineral Extractivism; Garimpo; Geographical Analysis.