Race and gender in peripheral resource towns: Boundaries and boundary-crossings in Tanjung Bara mining camp in Kalimantan, Indonesia

Large-scale, capital-intensive and globalized mining project sites represent an international order—little enclaves of the global located in the midst, but not really an intrinsic part, of the local context within which the mining operations take place.1 They represent the global and developmental aspirations of the national governments, who often earn huge amounts of revenues from these mining operations, but have significant impacts on the social and cultural fabric of the local communities that host such projects. As shown by Limin Teh in this volume, the upheavals that take place fundamentally change the preexisting social order, giving rise to urban settlements or company towns where the company is present in every aspect of life and where the community life mirrors the company hierarchies. However, it is not only class boundaries that are manifested on the space in such towns. Race and gender complicate the picture and create new spatial boundaries. This chapter locates itself at the intersection of larger theoretical and disciplinary fields from which it borrows for explanation of social and gender phenomena: the geographical insights on gated communities and their elaborations on the social class and race within company towns, and the anthropological analyses of boundary maintenance.2 Within the company town, it focuses on the mining camp, a gated residential community meant for upper-class managers from overseas and from other parts of the country that bars the entry of the general population of the company town.