Extractivism at Your Fingertips

On a Corresponsive Sport Science

“…Characterised by anthropocentrism, capitalism, individualism, datafication and an ethno-centric market economy, this is an age in which the environment and its inhabitants are at continual risk of objectification and commodification. Within the sport sciences, this (onto)logic 7 plays out subtly through the proliferation of second-hand information, in which primary experience is transformed into 'data' for re-presentation as 'knowledge' [7,8,18]. Through the deeply-entrenched hypothetico-deductive theory of the scientific method [19], research has seemingly become a vertically integrated process of knowledge production through extraction [cf.…”

“…Such expansive views shed new light on emergent forms of extractivism, and even bring into question purportedly 'sustainable' discourses focused on 'green development', 'green building' and the use of totalising technologies that attempt to 'greenwash' the crisis such technologies risk perpetuating [6,18]. For example, many industrial-scaled renewable energy projects still follow an (onto)logic grounded in anthropocentrism and capitalism, in which the earth is reconfigured, and its 'resources' exploited and commodified, for the betterment of humans 10 .…”

“…Recently, this (onto)logic has been unfolding in the ever-intensifying techno-digital landscape through the extraction of personal data embroiled in the use of devices purported to offer 'online' entertainment, mass communication and quick access to 'knowledge' [18]. Not only can such personal data be stored, it can be mined and leveraged for monetization, thereby situating the consumer as "both the resource for collecting data and the target of the potential uses and abuses of the data collected" [18, (p. 176)].…”

Extractivisms, existences, and extinctions

“…The many forms and paces that extractive violence can take and which dominate the overall contemporary logic at the planetary scale are opened up in the chapters of Our Extractive Age, edited by Shapiro and McNeish (2021). Therein, the logic and violence caused by extractivism is also expanded from the more directly tangible "natural resource" analysis to the digital, data, and virtual realms (Chagnon, Hagolani-Albov, and Hokkanen 2021), which indeed are closely intertwined, dependent upon, or feeding the more readily visible extractivisms that directly destroy habitable environments. These realms and how existences are redistributed within them through their transformations-whether separately or more tightly in connection with changes in the more readily tangible world-is an area that needs more study, e.g., based on the application of the four key questions identified in this book.…”

The political economy of agrarian extractivism: Lessons from Bolivia, by BenMcKay. Black Point: Fernwood Publications. 2020 172 pp. $20.00 (paperback). ISBN: 9781773632537

“…This extends to the multidimensional supply web of mineral extraction, labour exploitation, discriminations, and ecological toxification embedded in agrarian extractivism. Reliance on digital platforms controlling plant cycles and extracting large quantities of data from human and non-humans necessitates increases in mining critical raw materials (Chagnon et al, 2021) and demonstrates how capitalism-or "the Worldeater"-is paving many roads simultaneously towards "total extractivism" (Dunlap & Jakobsen, 2020). Where webs of exploitation and/or extractivism are spiralling with digital technologies, mining for energy infrastructure, the "green" extractivisms of wind, solar, tidal, and dam infrastructures are also absorbing the kinetic energy with climatic consequences (Dunlap, 2021a).…”