Through an exploration of the political economy of the current commodity boom in Latin America, and on the basis of recent appropriations of Henri Lefebvre's notion of planetary urbanization, this article proposes viewing spaces of resource extraction result ing from an escalating international demand for raw materials as particular mor phological expressions of marketdriven processes of urbanization. Furthermore, the article draws on Lefebvre to argue that such burgeoning spaces of urbanization are the result of a contradictory tension between spatial homogenization--in the form of multiscalar gov ernance frameworks and infrastructural programs--and territorial fragmentation--in the form of fixed capital allocations and stateled spatial segregation. When considered jointly, these contradictory movements allow us to grasp fully the extent of the problematic explos ion of spaces that, according to Lefebvre, characterizes capitalist urbanization. The article concludes by reflecting on the emancipatory promise that underlies the planetary exten sion of the urban form because, with the projection of material infrastructures required for resource extraction--especially information technologies--across the rural realm, local communities have been able to shed their isolated state and emerge as fully fledged political actors.
This paper proposes extending Urban Political Ecology's (UPE) ideas about the urbanisation of nature in order to include the geographical imprints of expanding, global metabolic flows of matter, energy and capital. It does so through the analysis of Huasco, a small agricultural village in northern Chile that has been overburdened with massive energy undertakings aimed at powering the operations of mines that supply raw materials to international markets. Like the sewage and technological networks that feed the life of cities, the paper argues that Huasco—as a metabolic vehicle of planetary urbanisation—has also been hidden from view, and thus the fetishisation of urban infrastructural networks initially theorised by UPE, has been ratcheted‐up to the global level by the mediating powers of neoliberalising capitalism. Just as the socio‐material arrangements that facilitate the smooth functioning of the modern city and household are riddled with glitches and exclusions, the paper suggests that globally up‐scaled infrastructures reveal even larger contradictions that put into jeopardy the very premises upon which the ongoing commodification of nature is grounded.
This article revisits Marx’s philosophy of history with respect to technological change, outlining some elements for the elaboration of a research agenda for materialist studies of science and technology. I argue that dominant thinking on the subject has been insufficiently attentive to relations of production and to the constitutive role of practical, transformative activity. The article suggests that a focus on class relations not only foregrounds the eminently open and contested nature of technology but also renders into view the multiplicity of actors and agencies involved in the making of natures. I draw from a subterranean strand of Marxist theorists of technology to develop a more-than-human approach to political agency through an interrogation of the complex interactions between human and machine in the everyday, experiential practicalities of the labor process. On this basis, the article contends that foregrounding the class preconditions for an alternative scientific praxis should assert itself as the starting point and horizon of a materialist Science and Technology Studies.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.