Living Minerals

ENDORSEMENTS“Lithium appears to offer us the hope of a renewable future. This powerful book shows us how much our thinking about the history and life of minerals must change for that hope to survive.”—Timothy Mitchell, author of Carbon Democracy “Drawing on deep historical work, Living Minerals proposes a new paradigm for approaching the world’s resources in a time of planetary crisis: Rather than resource nationalism, we should understand minerals as parts of the ecosystems under threat of extinction. Brilliant!”—Gabrielle Hecht, author of Residual Governance and Being Nuclear “Telling the history of lithium mining in the US and Chile, this book reexamines nationalist memories of mining glory and growth, opening up the imagination to post-extractivist, post-growth alternatives.” —Giorgos Kallis, Professor, Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies and the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Autonomous University of Barcelona

Javiera Barandiaran is Associate Professor in Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Director of UCSB’s Center for Restorative Environmental Work. She has published four books, including Science and Environment in Chile (MIT Press). For her research on lithium mining, she won a Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin and a fellowship at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center.