This article focuses on subsurface materiality to explore how small‐scale gold miners in Colombia navigate formal politics. In much critical research, the underground appears as a space of great developmentalist ambition, whose resources enable corporate expansion and bureaucratic rule. Here I take a slightly different route, as I demonstrate that subterranean matter makes possible ways of knowing and working that are anathema to a pro‐corporate legal regime. More specifically, I maintain that Colombian small‐scale miners experience the underground as invisible and unruly matter, and I show that this experience mediates their everyday criticism of, and resistance to, state governance.

中文翻译：

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地下手工艺：哥伦比亚的黄金、生计和地下物质


本文重点关注地下物质性，探讨哥伦比亚的小规模金矿开采者如何驾驭正式政治。在许多批判性研究中，地下世界似乎是一个充满发展主义野心的空间，其资源使企业扩张和官僚统治成为可能。在这里，我采取了稍微不同的路线，因为我证明地下物质使认识和工作的方式成为可能，而这对支持公司的法律制度是令人厌恶的。更具体地说，我认为哥伦比亚小规模矿工将地下视为看不见和难以驾驭的物质，并且我表明这种经历调解了他们对国家治理的日常批评和抵制。