Paper short abstract:

This paper explores contested lithium futures in traditional, formerly abandoned, mining territories in the German-Czech border region. It focuses on the politics of time in finding ‘acceptable’ forms of lithium extraction among local residents, scientists, company employees and public authorities.

Paper long abstract:

In recent years apparent critical supply crises and geopolitical pressures around the globe have injected new demands for the extraction, processing and recycling of mineral resources. Particularly in countries of the Global North, the temporal pressure to combat climate change and to ensure energy security became increasingly entangled with a “securization rhetoric around critical minerals” (Owen et al. 2022, 4). In the European context this involves, for example, quests for developing new re-mining technologies, and for reviving old mining frontiers or formerly closed mine sites. The paper explores how particular tropes of ‘mining for climate’ in general and ‘mining for lithium’ in particular build upon the infrastructures and residues of prior extractive operations in the German-Czech border region. Based on ethnographic research within a transdisciplinary re-mining project, we seek to shed light on the material, political, economic, and social ‘grey lines’ connecting and disrupting the fields of technology development, exploration, extraction, and remediation. More specifically we are interested in local crystallizations and contestations around recently introduced European and German mining policies aimed at ‘speeding up’ or ‘streamlining’ permitting processes. We argue that in the targeted or future areas of mineral extraction, scientific, corporate or state-led attempts of timing the public debate (fails to) set(s) the ground for socially ‘acceptable’ forms of research extraction. A central pillar in this regard is their potential in undermining alternative forms of future-making for which local community members strive.