<p>
<em>“This book is timely in bringing together scholars working on extractive industries and related themes in the Arctic, including fisheries, fossil fuels, and minerals development, climate change and the like in the US, Canada, Russia, and Greenland.”</em> <strong>• Thomas F. Thornton</strong>, University of Alaska Southeast</p>

Through diverse engagements with natural resource extraction and ecological vulnerability in the contemporary Arctic, contributors to this volume apprehend Arctic resource regimes through the concept of abstraction. Abstraction refers to the creation of new material substances and cultural values by detaching parts from existing substances and values. The abstractive process differs from the activity of extractive industries by its focus on the conceptual resources that conceal processes of exploitation associated with extraction. The study of abstraction can thus help us attune to the formal operations that make appropriations of value possible while disclosing the politics of extraction and of its representation.

Les mer

Examining the processes at work in sites of industrial extraction and ecological vulnerability in the contemporary Arctic, this book looks at the displacements that conceal exploitation, on the one hand, and appropriations of value on the other.

Les mer

List of Figures

Preface: From Northern Lights to Fluorescent lights
Arthur Mason

Introduction: Arctic Late Industrialism: Extracting Value through Abstraction
Arthur Mason
This chapter is available open access thanks to the support of the U.S. National Science Foundation, Office of Polar Programs Arctic Social Sciences

Chapter 1. To Melt Away: Abstractive Sensations in Ice
Cymene Howe
This chapter is available open access thanks to the support of the U.S. National Science Foundation, Office of Polar Programs Arctic Social Sciences

Chapter 2. The Biggest, the Best, the Most, the Last: Creating Valuable and Vulnerable Resources in Coastal Alaska
Danielle DiNovelli-Lang and Karen Hébert

Chapter 3. Timescaping the Arctic with Real-Time Data: Challenges for Fishing and Oil Interests
Vidar Hepsø and Elena Parmiggiani

Chapter 4. Wild Lands, Remote Edges: Formations and Abstractions in Greenland’s Resource Zones
Mark Nuttall

Chapter 5. Forging Off-World Frontiers: Chinese Steel and Arctic Iron
Mia M. Bennett

Chapter 6. Constructing and Contesting Temporalities in the Mackenzie Gas Project
Carly Dokis

Chapter 7. Material Unconscious of the Earth: Extractive Ontology and the Invisible War in Siberia
Oxana Timofeeva

Chapter 8. Representation Without Resemblance: Graphical Expression in Hydrocarbon Industry
Arthur Mason

Afterword: Arctic Abstractions
Michael J. Watts
This chapter is available open access thanks to the support of the U.S. National Science Foundation, Office of Polar Programs Arctic Social Sciences

Index

Les mer

Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781805393382
Publisert
2024-07-05
Utgiver
Berghahn Books
Høyde
229 mm
Bredde
152 mm
Aldersnivå
RES, U, P, 05, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
192

Redaktør

Biografisk notat

Arthur Mason is Associate Professor in Social Anthropology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. His previous edited volume is Subterranean Estates: Life Worlds of Oil and Gas, with co-editors Hannah Appel and Michael Watts (Cornell, 2015).