Putting in place to extract: Infrastructures of extractivism and the case of lithium extraction in Chile

Abstract

Extractivism has become a widely used concept in the field of research as the extensive and intensive extraction of natural resources increasingly undergirds capital accumulation. However, most of the existing literature on extractivism has focused mainly on how to define it and how to identify its consequences (conflicts, violence, discourses, power imbalances); the emphasis thus has been on looking at what comes out of the process. Less attention has been paid to what goes in to the process of extraction, its pre-requisites, and those material and immaterial enablers that need to be “in place” for extraction to occur. This article corrects this oversight by highlighting what has been glossed over in the literature: the critical role played by cultural (namely, narratives, knowledge, capital, law, and bureaucracy) and material infrastructures, and the ontologies that make extraction possible over time. I argue extractivism would not exist without a one-world world (Law, 2015) notion that by positing a nature/civilization divide makes it both possible and legitimate to instrumentalise socionatures (both human and non-human) by constituting them as open for human exploitation. Drawing on anti-colonial thinking, critical cultural political economy, and critical geography of resources, this article analyzes the case study of lithium extraction in Chile so as to render visible the infrastructures that enable extraction. Lithium extraction constitutes a fruitful example of both how old extractivism has worked to enable new extractive frontiers and how to better understand the challenges that must be overcome if we are to move towards post-extractive futures.