123. STS Engagements with Critical Mineral Studies
Javiera Barandiaran, University of California, Santa Barbara; Kirk Jalbert, Arizona State University; Roopali Phadke, Macalester College
Posted: February 28, 2022 Accepted Languages: English/Inglés/Inglês, Spanish/Español/Espanhol, Portuguese/Portugués
Demand for critical minerals is predicted to soar in coming decades to support renewable energy, electric vehicle, aerospace, defense and related industries. In tandem with this rapid growth is an emerging body of scholarship in STS investigating how demand for and supply of critical minerals are co-produced within political, economic, cultural, and technoscientific systems. This open panel invites paper proposals exploring these interdependencies. Specifically, we welcome panelists examining resource nationalism, risk assessments, environmental evaluations, techniques and knowledges involved in extraction, production, and promotion, as well as the double binds of securing lands for resource extraction to support green economies. Within these, we are interested in papers that explore questions such as: Who gets to define what natural resources are deemed most critical? Who will bear the environmental, social, and health impacts of the global race for critical minerals? How do knowledge and its gaps about the critical minerals industry contribute to these inequalities? What opportunities are there for democratizing science and technology related to critical minerals? And how can STS concepts, methods, and engagements provide foundational tools and resources for groups and communities seeking to make sense of their relationship with critical minerals industries? The answers to these questions are necessary to heeding this conference’s call to produce reconfigurations of assemblages of humans and more-than-humans based on care and responsibility. The panel co-chairs speak English and Spanish and can accommodate papers in these languages as well as Portuguese.
