1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910255444603321

Autore

Klinger Julie Michelle <1983->

Titolo

Rare Earth Frontiers [[e-book] ] : From Terrestrial Subsoils to Lunar Landscapes / / Julie Michelle Klinger

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Ithaca : , : Cornell University Press, , 2017

©2017

ISBN

1-5017-1459-7

1-5017-1461-9

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource

Disciplina

553.4/94

Soggetti

Lunar mining

Rare earth metals - Brazil - Amazonas

Rare earth metals - China - Inner Mongolia

Rare earth metals - Political aspects

Rare earth metals - Social aspects

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Introduction : welcome to the rare earth frontier -- What are rare earth elements? -- Placing China in the world history of discovery, production, and use -- Welcome to the hometown of rare earths : 1980-2010 -- Rude awakenings -- From the heartland to the head of the dog -- Extraglobal extraction.

Sommario/riassunto

Rare Earth Frontiers is a work of human geography that serves to demystify the powerful elements that make possible the miniaturization of electronics, green energy and medical technologies, and essential telecommunications and defense systems. Julie Michelle Klinger draws attention to the fact that the rare earths we rely on most are as common as copper or lead, and this means the implications of their extraction are global. Klinger excavates the rich historical origins and ongoing ramifications of the quest to mine rare earths in ever more impossible places. Klinger writes about the devastating damage to lives and the environment caused by the exploitation of rare earths. She demonstrates in human terms how scarcity myths have been conscripted into diverse geopolitical campaigns that use rare earth



mining as a pretext to capture spaces that have historically fallen beyond the grasp of centralized power. These include legally and logistically forbidding locations in the Amazon, Greenland, and Afghanistan, and on the Moon. Drawing on ethnographic, archival, and interview data gathered in local languages and offering possible solutions to the problems it documents, this book examines the production of the rare earth frontier as a place, a concept, and a zone of contestation, sacrifice, and transformation.