In January 1999, the Canadian government announced their withdrawal from the Cape Breton mining industry with a settlement package for redundant miners, which was considered inadequate by miners and their families. In response, a group of women organized a community-based campaign, United Families (UF), led by two women who traveled to Ottawa to meet national politicians presenting themselves explicitly as “miners’ wives.” While the UF located their campaign within the context of family and community, as expected of miners’ wives, their principal focus was the men disadvantaged by the settlement. Here they strayed onto the terrain of the men's union.

To support their case the women took photographs of miners leaving the pit at the end of a shift and organized them into an album. This became a catalyst for the disjuncture between the gendered expectations associated with female roles, and the women's efforts to represent the interests of the men. Intended as objective evidence in support of their position, the photographs carried a range of complex emotions relating to the women's campaign: They expressed the subjective meanings of the women's relationship with mining and the men photographed, as well as providing material evidence of the condition of the miners. This subjectivity was overlaid onto gendered subtexts inscribed within the history of photography in the public and domestic spheres.

In campaign negotiations the women struggled to control the meaning of the photographic images and their endeavors resulted in only very minor amendments to the original settlement. The UF women's creative use of photography ultimately undermined the legitimacy of the women's negotiations. However, the photographs remain a testament to the history of mining in Cape Breton and to the emotional commitment of women to a partnership with men forged through the sexual division of labor in coal mining.

This article draws upon a range of evidence and theories of gender, activism, and photographic practice to analyze the ways in which the women were disadvantaged in their campaign.

Debates on the causes of Indonesia's recent democratic decline have mostly focused on institutional, political and attitudinal–behavioural causes. By bringing the rural political economy dimension into this conversation, this article presents another picture of the illiberal turn in Indonesian democracy. Specifically, it examines the implications of elite control over land and coal resources on democratic quality. Based on in-country fieldwork materials and relevant secondary data, it analyses instances of episodic repression, the contraction of democratic spaces and the corrosive effects of coal-fuelled intra-elite clientelism by looking at the elite control of land resources and the influence of political and economic elites benefitting from the coal industry in elections and the broader political arena. Finally, it also discusses the capitulation of key agrarian social movement actors to state interests and its impact on the movement's ability to resist democratic regression. This elaboration shows how the current contour of elite control over rural resources contributes to the declining quality of Indonesian democracy.

Strategic inquiries into coal mining by Australian Governments advocate increased use of comprehensive benefit cost analyses and nonmarket valuation studies when assessing individual project proposals. The study reported in this paper addresses these Government concerns, by integrating results of a choice experiment into a benefit cost analysis undertaken for a Colliery in the Southern Coalfield of New South Wales, Australia. Results of the study were used to aid the State government in evaluating proposals for continued underground coal mining. We show that impacts of mine subsidence on streams, swamps, and Aboriginal sites negatively affect community wellbeing. Social welfare increases with the length of time that the mine provides direct employment. We demonstrate how implicit price estimates from the choice experiment can be incorporated into a benefit cost analysis of continued mining. Benefit cost analyses were carried out for a range of policy scenarios—including policies that would restrict mining activities at the Colliery and protect environmental and cultural features in the Southern Coalfield. Notwithstanding the environmental impacts generated by mining operations, continued mining is shown to be a more economically efficient course of action.

Amounts of mineral nutrients and aluminium (Al) were assessed in the globoid inclusions, proteinaceous matrix and druse crystals of Eucalyptus calophylla seeds collected from trees grown in coal-mine (mean soil pH 4.3, Al 260 μg g−1) and forest soils (pH 5.3, Al 10 μg g−1). Energy-dispersive X-ray microanalysis (EDX) of bulk frozen hydrated samples indicated that significantly higher amounts of Mg, P, S, K and Ca occurred in the globoid inclusions of mine- than forest-site seeds. In both seedstocks, Al was detected in the globoid inclusions but not in the proteinaceous matrix or druse crystals. Significantly higher amounts of Al occurred in mine-site samples of dry and germinating seeds than in forest-site seeds. It was concluded that globoid inclusions may be useful as indicators of the soil conditions in which the parent plant was grown.

This paper presents some recent applications of sensing, guidance and telerobotic technology in the coal mining industry. Of special interest is the development of semi or fully autonomous systems to provide remote guidance and communications for coal mining equipment. We consider the use of radar and inertial based sensors in an attempt to solve the horizontal and lateral guidance problems associated with mining equipment automation. We also describe a novel teleoperated robot vehicle with unique communications capabilities, called the Numbat, which is used in underground mine safety and reconnaissance missions.