Currently Reading
A major part of my Dirty Bits project involves following the supply chain of materials that make possible virtual goods and digital devices, from their origins in places like Petosi, Bolivia to their eventual disposal in places like Agbogbloshie, Ghana. We can follow this component materials around the globe and across the periodic table, from arsenic to zinc. There is a growing body of literature on specific elements; my task is to pull these individual stories together into a coherent environmental history.
Veronese, K. (2015). Rare: The High-Stakes Race to Satisfy Our Need for the Scarcest Metals on Earth. Prometheus Books.
Fletcher, S. (2011). Bottled Lightning: Superbatteries, Electric Cars, and the New Lithium Economy (First Edition edition). Hill and Wang.
Sheller, M. (2014). Aluminum Dreams: The Making of Light Modernity. The MIT Press.
Robins, N. A. (2011). Mercury, Mining, and Empire the Human and Ecological Cost of Colonial Silver Mining in the Andes. Indiana University Press.
Ingulstad, M., Perchard, A., & Storli, E. (2014). Tin and Global Capitalism, 1850-2000: A History of "the Devil’s Metal". Routledge.