Worlds of Lithium is an anthropological study of the replacement of fossil fuel transport with a new fleet of electric vehicles powered by lithium-ion batteries. 
A lot of public attention goes to the promise of electric vehicles, meaning less oil will be needed for road transport. What remains hidden, however, are the disruptive transformations of the landscapes and societies through which lithium travels. It is these transformations that the project brings into public view.
For we are convinced that through empirical assessment of the side effects of this planetary strategy to respond to global warming, we can avoid implementing climate solutions that end up worsening our current social and environmental problems.
The research questions of WOL are:
How does lithium connect, and disruptively transform, the landscapes and societies where lithium is extracted, turned into battery technology, used and potentially recycled?
How do processes of lithium extraction, battery production, and battery recycling relate to each other and what might this mean for energy policy?
Worlds of Lithium innovatively answers these questions through a transnational documentation of different interrelated knowledges and practices of four groups of actors:
Natural and social scientists working around lithium
Communities responding to ecological and social transformations
Policy makers concerned with decarbonisation
Companies involved in lithium extraction, battery production and battery recycling
We investigate how these actors collaborate; how they clash; and how multiple worlds are generated in social and material practices ‘powered’ by lithium. By doing so, the project will challenge the modern imagination of transitions towards sustainability as if they were taking place in a given ‘container universe’ and will illustrate how transitions are taking place beyond Eurocentric discourse and practice.
Thus, the project will articulate lessons springing from these co-existing knowledges and practices of people engaging with transformative landscapes, and will innovatively theorize new imaginaries to think about what counts as sustainable transitions in times of enhanced ecological sensitivity.
THEORY
NORWAY
CHILE
CHINA
EDITED BOOKS
Forthcoming in 2021. Environmental Alterities.
By Cristobal Bonelli and Antonia Walford (eds.)
Mattering Press
EDITED SPECIAL ISSUE
2020 Políticas de la evidencia: etnografías entre mundos unívocos y mundos múltiples. (‘Politics of evidence: ethnographies between univocal and equivocal worlds’)
By Marina Weinberg, Marcelo González and Cristobal Bonelli (eds.)
In Antípoda. Revista de Antropología y Arqueología 41 (4).
REFEREED JOURNAL ARTICLES
2020 Políticas de la evidencia: entre posverdad, objetividad y etnografía.
By Marina Weinberg, Marcelo González and Cristobal Bonelli (eds.)
In Antípoda. Revista de Antropología y Arqueología 41 (4): 3-27.
UNDER REVIEW
Cuerpos de cobre: Extractivismo en Chuquicamata, Chile.
By Marina Weinberg.
In Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology.
Corporalidad, Género y Extractivismo: La identidad masculina minera en el norte de Chile.
By Marina Weinberg and Paulina Salinas.
For the book: Machines, genre et natures: anthropologie des territoires extractifs. Centre de Recherche et Documentation sur les Amériques (IHEAL-CREDA), París, France.
IN PREPARATION
Microbial ecologies and environmental micro-disasters in Northern Chile.
By Cristobal Bonelli and Cristina Dorador.
In Tapuya, Latino American Science, Technology and Society. Special Issue Ends in Other Terms: Uncommoning Extinction, co-edited by Marisol de la Cadena, Marcelo Gonzalez, Manuel Tironi. Forthcoming 2021.
Affected streets: towards a mongrel-quiltro politics.
By Cristobal Bonelli and Marisol de la Cadena.
For the book: Ecological Reparation: Repair, Remediation and Resurgence in Social and Environmental Conflict. Bristol University Press (BUP). Edited by Maddalena Tacchetti, Dimitris Papadopoulos and Maria Puig de la Bellacasa. Forthcoming 2021.
Bipolar Transitions. Imagining futures with(out) lithium.
FORTHCOMING
PAPER PRESENTATION
Conference - Mending Ecologies: Reparation in Social and Environmental Conflict
With Marisol de la Cadena at the Conference Mending Ecologies.
Link
WORKSHOP
Work, gender, and mining in the Atacama Desert.
Inaugural meeting of the research network TraGeMA Estudios sobre Trabajo, Género y Minería en el Desierto de Atacama (November 2020). Organized by Marina Weinberg (Chile).
PREVIOUS
DOCUMENTARY
Anthropocene: The Human Epoch.
Cristobal Bonelli. Commentator of the documentary: Anthropocene: The Human Epoch. Delft. The Netherlands. February 2020.
Link
WORKSHOP
Fair Energy Transitions: The role of technology.
March 26 in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
Canceled workshops (due to covid-19).
To fix or not to fix: Scales, survival units, and infra-decarbonisation in Northern Chile.
Panel:
Post-carbon Infrastructure: Remaking Human-Earth Relations in the Anthropocene (organized by Penny Harvey, Hannah Knox, Andrew Barry).
RAI2020 Anthropology and Geography: Dialogues Past, Present and Future.
Royal Anthropological Institute, British Museum, SOAS, RGS.
Department of Anthropology,
University of Amsterdam
Nieuwe Achtergracht 166
Postadres
Postbus 15509
1001 NA Amsterdam
Starting Grant
Worlds of Lithium No. 853133
Worlds of Lithium is an anthropological study of the replacement of fossil fuel transport with a new fleet of electric vehicles powered by lithium-ion batteries.
A lot of public attention goes to the promise of electric vehicles, meaning less oil will be needed for road transport. What remains hidden, however, are the disruptive transformations of the landscapes and societies through which lithium travels. It is these transformations that the project brings into public view.
For we are convinced that through empirical assessment of the side effects of this planetary strategy to respond to global warming, we can avoid implementing climate solutions that end up worsening our current social and environmental problems.
The research questions of WOL are:
How does lithium connect, and disruptively transform, the landscapes and societies where lithium is extracted, turned into battery technology, used and potentially recycled?
How do processes of lithium extraction, battery production, and battery recycling relate to each other and what might this mean for energy policy?
Worlds of Lithium innovatively answer these questions through a transnational documentation of different interrelated knowledges and practices of four groups of actors:
Natural and social scientists working around lithium.
Communities responding to ecological and social transformations.
Policy makers concerned with decarbonisation.
Companies involved in lithium extraction, battery production and battery recycling.
We investigate how these actors collaborate; how they clash; and how multiple worlds are generated in social and material practices ‘powered’ by lithium. By doing so, the project will challenge the modern imagination of transitions towards sustainability as if they were taking place in a given ‘container universe’ and will illustrate how transitions are taking place beyond Eurocentric discourse and practice.
Thus, the project will articulate lessons springing from these co-existing knowledges and practices of people engaging with transformative landscapes, and will innovatively theorize new imaginaries to think about what counts as sustainable transitions in times of enhanced ecological sensitivity.
The sites for these studies are Chile, the largest lithium producer in the world; China, the world leader in lithium-ion battery production, and Norway, a country with the highest levels of electric vehicle adoption.
Instead of simply following lithium along these sites, as if they formed a global-lineal chain, we will instead explore their interconnection, asking how production in China affects extraction in Chile and use in Norway, or how recycling lithium innovation in Norway will curb demand for lithium in Chile, or re-inform battery production in China.
THEORY
Worlds of Lithium in Theory
NORWAY
from batteries to recycling material
CHILE
From Brine-Water to Lithium Carbonate Mineral
CHINA
From Lithium carbonate mineral to battery (2012).
PhD Researcher
EDITED BOOKS
Forthcoming in 2021. Environmental Alterities.
By Cristobal Bonelli and Antonia Walford (eds.)
Mattering Press
EDITED SPECIAL ISSUE
2020 Políticas de la evidencia: etnografías entre mundos unívocos y mundos múltiples. (‘Politics of evidence: ethnographies between univocal and equivocal worlds’)
By Marina Weinberg, Marcelo González and Cristobal Bonelli (eds.)
In Antípoda. Revista de Antropología y Arqueología 41 (4).
REFEREED JOURNAL ARTICLES
2020 Políticas de la evidencia: entre posverdad, objetividad y etnografía.
By Marina Weinberg, Marcelo González and Cristobal Bonelli (eds.)
In Antípoda. Revista de Antropología y Arqueología 41(4): 3-27.
UNDER REVIEW
Cuerpos de cobre: Extractivismo en Chuquicamata, Chile.
By Marina Weinberg.
In Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology.
Corporalidad, Género y Extractivismo: La identidad masculina minera en el norte de Chile.
By Marina Weinberg and Paulina Salinas.
For the book: Machines, genre et natures: anthropologie des territoires extractifs. Centre de Recherche et Documentation sur les Amériques (IHEAL-CREDA), París, France.
IN PREPARATION
Microbial ecologies and environmental micro-disasters in Northern Chile.
By Cristobal Bonelli and Cristina Dorador.
In Tapuya, Latino American Science, Technology and Society. Special Issue Ends in Other Terms: Uncommoning Extinction, co-edited by Marisol de la Cadena, Marcelo Gonzalez, Manuel Tironi. Forthcoming 2021.
Affected streets: towards a mongrel-quiltro politics.
By Cristobal Bonelli and Marisol de la Cadena.
For the book: Ecological Reparation: Repair, Remediation and Resurgence in Social and Environmental Conflict. Bristol University Press (BUP). Edited by Maddalena Tacchetti, Dimitris Papadopoulos and Maria Puig de la Bellacasa. Forthcoming 2021.
Bipolar Transitions. Imagining futures with(out) lithium.
By Marina Weinberg and Cristobal Bonelli.
FORTHCOMING
Conference - Mending Ecologies: Reparation in Social and Environmental Conflict
With Marisol de la Cadena at the Conference Mending Ecologies.
Link
WORKSHOP
Work, gender, and mining in the Atacama Desert.
Inaugural meeting of the research network TraGeMA Estudios sobre Trabajo, Género y Minería en el Desierto de Atacama (November 2020). Organized by Marina Weinberg (Chile).
PREVIOUS
DOCUMENTARY
Anthropocene: The Human Epoch.
Cristobal Bonelli. Commentator of the documentary: Anthropocene: The Human Epoch. Delft. The Netherlands. February 2020.
Link
WORKSHOP
Fair Energy Transitions: The role of technology.
March 26 in Eindhoven, the Netherlands.
Canceled workshops (due to covid-19).
PAPER PRESENTATION
To fix or not to fix: Scales, survival units, and infra-decarbonisation in Northern Chile.
Panel:
Post-carbon Infrastructure: Remaking Human-Earth Relations in the Anthropocene (organized by Penny Harvey, Hannah Knox, Andrew Barry).
RAI2020 Anthropology and Geography: Dialogues Past, Present and Future.
Royal Anthropological Institute, British Museum, SOAS, RGS.
Department of Anthropology
University of Amsterdam
Nieuwe Achtergracht 166
Postadres
Postbus 15509
1001 NA Amsterdam
Starting Grant
Worlds of Lithium No. 853133
Worlds of Lithium is an anthropological study of the replacement of fossil fuel transport with a new fleet of electric vehicles powered by lithium-ion batteries.
A lot of public attention goes to the promise of electric vehicles, meaning less oil will be needed for road transport. What remains hidden, however, are the disruptive transformations of the landscapes and societies through which lithium travels. It is these transformations that the project brings into public view.
The research questions of WOL are:
How does lithium connect, and disruptively transform, the landscapes and societies where lithium is extracted, turned into battery technology, used and potentially recycled?
How do processes of lithium extraction, battery production, and battery recycling relate to each other and what might this mean for energy policy?
The sites for these studies are Chile, the largest lithium producer in the world; China, the world leader in lithium-ion battery production, and Norway, a country with the highest levels of electric vehicle adoption.
Instead of simply following lithium along these sites, as if they formed a global-lineal chain, we will instead explore their interconnection, asking how production in China affects extraction in Chile and use in Norway, or how recycling lithium innovation in Norway will curb demand for lithium in Chile, or re-inform battery production in China.
NORWAY
CHILE
CHINA
Cristobal Bonelli
Principal Investigator
Marina Weinberg
Senior Researcher
Michelle Geraerts
PhD Researcher
Arianna Injeian
Research Assistant
Department of Anthropology
University of Amsterdam
Nieuwe Achtergracht 166
Postadres
Postbus 15509
1001 NA Amsterdam
Starting Grant Worlds of Lithium No. 853133. University of Amsterdam.