Lithium’s buzz: extractivism between booms in Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile

Abstract

ABSTRACT Plans for decarbonizing energy transitions – attempts to mitigate the climate crisis through electrifying the global economy – will require minerals like lithium for the electric vehicles and batteries of the near future. As a result, a ‘buzz’ of economic speculation, governmental policy making, and grassroots opposition is intensifying in the so-called ‘lithium triangle’ in Southern Bolivia, north western Argentina, and Northern Chile. Using archival investigation and stakeholder interviews this article examines the temporal and spatial effects of the extractivist buzz as it operates through complex ecological and social dynamics complicated further still by energy transitions. As decarbonization and the climate crisis inform and inflect extractivism, they also offer new vantages from which to understand established global, regional, and local power relations. Extractivism produces and shapes landscapes and timescapes through anticipation, frontiers, and sacrifice: buzz, boom, and bust cycles that have shaped livelihoods and landscapes in these three countries since colonization.