Extracting the Future

"Extracting the Future offers a penetrating analysis of how plans for global energy transition collide with histories of extractivism, resource colonialism, and local resistance. With ethnographic depth and geopolitical insight, Mark Goodale unravels the contradictions at the heart of our lithium-fueled future to map the tension between the promises of green energy and the realities of mineral dependency. Essential reading for all scholars of energy, environment, and global politics."--Imre Szeman, Futures of the Sun: The Struggle over Renewable Life

"Weaving stories drawn from salt flats, evaporation ponds, engineering spaces, EV showrooms, public meetings, and business headquarters, among others, this book creates a portrait of lithium mining that is far more comprehensive--and narratively captivating--than any other I've come across."--Andrea Marston, author of Subterranean Matters: Cooperative Mining and Resource Nationalism in Plurinational Bolivia

"In Extracting the Future, Goodale artfully documents the metamorphosis of lithium as it maneuvers through lives, labor, and geopolitical formations to illustrate how this elemental form occupies horizons of energy revolution and climatological redemption."--Cymene Howe, author of Ecologics: Wind and Power in the Anthropocene

Mark Goodale is Professor of Cultural and Social Anthropology at the University of Lausanne and author of Reinventing Human Rights and A Revolution in Fragments.