Rare earth frontiers : from terrestrial subsoils to lunar landscapes / Julie Michelle Klinger.

Rare earth frontiers : from terrestrial subsoils to lunar landscapes / Julie Michelle Klinger.

9781501714603 (electronic book)
1501714600 (electronic book)
9781501714610 (electronic book)
1501714619 (electronic book)
9781501714580
1501714589
9781501714597
1501714597

Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2017.

English

1 online resource (xii, 325 pages)

TN490.A2 K56 2017eb

553.4/94

"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."--Provided by publisher.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Access limited to authorized users.

Description based on print version record.

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