September 21 to October 1, 2023 // Green extractivism' and global commodity chains: writing workshop in Trondheim, Norway
The extraction of natural resources — particularly rare earth elements and other metals and minerals required to meet rising “clean” energy demand — has been hailed in recent years as a means to transition to a future low-carbon economy.
This trend of "green" extractivism has led to the expansion of new resource frontiers, oftentimes reproducing old patterns of accumulation and dispossession. Big industries have aligned their discourses with these environmental imperatives, playing the "green card" as allies in the struggle against environmental problems, including climate change debates.
These “green” strategies risk creating new resource dependencies and environmental inequalities based on the imposition of specific models of “progress.” The growing demand for these 'green' commodities has also led to new dynamics in global supply chains, with countries in the global North emerging as suppliers of critical minerals and metals.
This workshop gathers junior scholars from anthropology, history, and the social sciences more broadly, whose research examines the paradoxes and contradictions — past and present — inherent in environmentally-sound supply chains of critical natural commodities. These disciplines have recently undergone a "material turn", and the workshop brings together research on the conundrums of contemporary “green” commodity chains from historical and anthropological perspectives.
