Creating, capturing, and circulating commodities: The technology and politics of material resource flows, from the 19th century to the present

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Creating, capturing, and circulating commodities: The technology and politics of material resource flows, from the 19th century to the present Frank Veraarta, Anna Åbergb,*, Hanna Vikströmc a

Eindhoven University of Technology, School of Innovation Sciences, Technology Innovation & Society, P.O. Box 513, 5600MB, Eindhoven, the Netherlands Chalmers University of Technology, Department of Technology Management and Economics, 412 96, Göteborg, Sweden c Umeå University Institutionen för idé-och samhällsstudier, Umeå universitet, 901 87, Umeå, Sweden b

A R T I C LE I N FO

A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Extractive resources History of technology Environmental history Resource chain dynamics Resource construction Resource nationalism Resource security Resource colonialism Transnational history Global history Technopolitics Sustainability Resource spaces Limestone Iron Metals Uranium Oil

Extractive resources are unevenly distributed geographically and our dependence on such resources is growing, which has led to ever increasing flows of resources across the world. This situation has caused concern for numerous actors. However, such worries are not new. Todays’ feel of a deeply interconnected, rapidly changing world with global grand challenges has striking resemblances with the nineteenth century mood in the industrializing countries. In this special issue we study the temporal dynamics and multiple geographies of resource flows, and how actors have attempted to shape and control them. In five articles by historians of technology and the environment from Sweden, Russia and the Netherlands, we aim to broaden the view on resource narratives and emphasize their non-static characters by showing developments of resources as they travel through time and space. This introductory article introduces and positions five themes that are addressed in the contributions of special issue. In this special issue scholars discuss (1) the social construction of resources, (2) the importance of resources to nation states, (3) resource flows as transnational practices, (4) technopolitics of resources, and (5) resource flows as global political power hierarches, of resources such as oil, metals, iron ore, uranium and stone.

1. Introduction Virtually all people of today’s technological societies unconsciously use and consume material natural resources from around the globe on a daily basis. Whether it is the energy usage of Middle Eastern or African crude oil, nuclear power fueled by Australian, Kazakh or Canadian uranium or the batteries of today’s ICT appliances using lithium from Chile and cobalt from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The central role of the materiality of technologies in the development of modern societies has made places around the globe part of a joint history of natural resources excavation, production and usage. In this special issue, we want to show and analyze these entangled histories of extracted resources. A resource’s journey, from recognition to broad consumption, is often long and winding, in both time and space. Historical as well as contemporary narratives of material resources tend to focus on one

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aspect and one place of their journey: exploration, production, consumption, import-export studies and material flow accountings (amongst others Hecht, 1998; Butler, 2007; Sieferle et al., 2006; Krausmann et al., 2011, 2013, 2016; Gierlinger and Krausmann, 2012; Bosme, 2013; Beckert, 2014; Schaffartzik et al., 2015; Abuya, 2016; Råstad Bjørst, 2016; Baker and Westman, 2018; Lintsen et al., 2018; Hölsgens, 2019; Högselius, 2013; Åberg, 2013). Consequently, we may lose sight of a wide and intricate web of actors and decisions, and risk mischaracterizing resource issues as static or related to one particular place. In this special issue, consisting of five articles by historians of technology and the environment, we aim to broaden the view on resource narratives. We emphasize the non-static characteristics of natural resource activities by tracing their movement through time and space. This involves examining the techno-scientific, geographical, economic, and social circumstances surrounding the defining, mining

Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (F. Veraart), [email protected] (A. Åberg), [email protected] (H. Vikström).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2019.10.017 Received 24 July 2019; Received in revised form 29 October 2019; Accepted 29 October 2019 2214-790X/ © 2019 Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Please cite this article as: Frank Veraart, Anna Åberg and Hanna Vikström, The Extractive Industries and Society, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.exis.2019.10.017

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change, including energy transition, environmental impacts, fair trade, and corporate social responsibility (Grin et al., 2010; Leadbeater, 2014; Abuya, 2016; Odell et al., 2018; Tost et al., 2018; Bazilian, 2018; Lamb et al., 2017; Fordham et al., 2018; Baker and Westman, 2018; Van Bockstael, 2018; Gamu et al., 2015). The economic, social and environmental challenges of sustainability are nonetheless not just a present-day phenomenon. These issues also cropped up in the past. Associated attempts to achieve progress through modernization, as well as the awareness of resource shortage and environmental harm due to resource extraction and use, existed before the term sustainability was coined (McNeil, 2000; Du Pisani, 2006; Pointing, 2007; Oreskes and Conway, 2010; Caradonna, 2017; Lintsen et al., 2018). This interest in sustainability issues coincides with today’s feeling of a rapidly changing world which are mirrored in, for example, the formulation of the UN sustainable development goals. The resemblances with the nineteenth-century mood in industrializing nations are striking. Historians of technology of the Tensions of Europe Network are developing a research agenda to deepen our understanding of the long-term developments of these global grand challenges. These scholars critically reflect on how technologies have been applied to deal with the long term dynamics of (global) crisis and how these have been shaping today's and future societies (Van der Vleuten, 2019). Historically resource extraction and security have been seen as central in dealing with societies challenges. Then as now, the ability of states and businesses to control resource flows was crucial (Heymann et al., 2019). To exert this control meant striving for access to as large a part of the resource chain as possible. To understand how such efforts played out along resource chains, we need to look at resources as they were constituted, and what mining and handling activities would lay the foundations for (trans)national commodity chains, their control, and the social, economic, and environmental impacts. The authors of this special issue thus shed light on the ongoing revaluation process which has and will continue to shape extractive industries’ activities around the world. The specific spatial and temporal contexts from different origins, provide a greater understanding of the many diverse interests and developments involved in the transformation of resources. While the extractive resources in our cases differ in context and material character, five themes have emerged as common notions in our historical work:

and managing of resources as well as the impacts on society. The articles bring together the historical dynamics of resource management, technological development and international relations governing resource flows and politics. These dynamics are analyzed by charting resource flows at different stages of the commodity chain, from places of excavation to consumption, through institutional settings in various countries, from the nineteenth century to the present. The special issue by no means tries to be comprehensive in its empirical scope but brings together new promising approaches applied by historians of technology of the Tensions of Europe Network from Sweden, Russia and The Netherlands. These highlights a variety of contextual aspects of entangled histories along material resource flows. The natural resources include metals, iron ore, crude oil, uranium and stone. By studying their temporal dynamics in politics as well as in the global value chain, we critically consider the apparent static character of resources during extraction, commodification, and application. The accounts in this special issue show how resource flows are shaped by socio-technical structures, and also how resource flows shape socio-technical infrastructures. Most resources have become part of an elaborate international trade and industrial complex, and thus connect and affect scientific and technological developments, mining industries, international governmental relations, businesses and consumer culture globally. A historical analysis reveals the temporal dynamics in these entanglements. Natural resources are not evenly distributed, and no nation is selfsufficient; consequently, access to natural resources is highly interconnected with geopolitics (Eckes, 1979; Vikström 2017; Lesser, 1989; Ingulstad, 2011). This issue has concerned both business and state actors throughout history. These actors feared the scarcity and shortages of resource supply. In 1865, economist W.S. Jevons’ book The Coal Question, warning about the exhaustion of coal mines, shook the British government. It consequently established the Royal Commission on Coal Supplies that regularly investigated the supply and extraction of coal – one of the major resources at the time. Jevons’ book belongs to a historical context in which concern was mounting regarding the societal relevance of resources (Missemer, 2012). The threat of resource scarcity was especially apparent during last centuries World Wars and the 1970s fuel crisis, and such fears recently resurfaced in debates about ´strategic´ and ‘critical’ materials. Underlying these fears are the random geographies of resources and their extraction. While nineteenth-century resources nationalism focused on military and economic vulnerabilities, today's debates highlight competing societal demands in land use, labour conditions and the environmental effects of resource excavations (Hilson, 2002; Bloodworth et al., 2009; European Union, 2008; Abuya, 2016; Veraart, 2019). Historically, the extractive industries have continuously faced new challenges. One current major challenge is the increasing demand for sustainability technologies and sustainable production. These cause shifts in markets and economic power in a highly globalized world. Scholars in humanities and social sciences are increasingly focusing on resource extraction and sustainability challenges in light of climate

• The construction of resources • The importance of resources to nation states • Resource flows as transnational practice • The technopolitics of resource flows • Resource flows as (global) political power hierarchies. We start by presenting these themes and linking them with academic literatures to underline how they enrich our understanding of the historical, long term developments in (transnational) resource chains. Table 1 gives a quick overview how themes are distributed over different contributions of this special issue. Then an overview of the

Table 1 Overview of the themes covered by the authors’ contributions.

Construction of resources The importance of resources to nation states Resource flows as transnational practice The technopolitics of resource flows Resource flows as (global) political power hierarchies Resources Countries/Regions

AlexandraBekasova

Hanna Vikström

X X

X

Anna Åberg & Maja Fjӕstad

Karl Bruno

Frank Veraart, Jan-Pieter Smits & Erik v.d. Vleuten

X X X X

X X X

Iron Liberia Sweden

Crude oil Netherlands Nigeria

X X

X

X X X X

Limestone Russia

Metals International

Uranium Sweden

X

2

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However, resource extractions have, at times, caused conflict with citizens directly affected by the extraction and refining of a certain resource (Lintsen et al., 2018; Veraart, 2019; Sörlin, 1988). As Avango et al. (2013) note, it is crucial to acknowledge different voices in the debates on resources and thereby unpack who has the power to construct or deconstruct a resource in a certain context. It is also important to scrutinize the narratives used to legitimize extractive activities. In 21st century Sweden, for example, the Geological Survey of Sweden calls for that country to take responsibility and mine critical metals, nationally, instead of exporting the environmental consequences of mining to other nations – but underlying such claims is often the desire to control national resources for political reasons (Avango et al., 2013; Haikola and Anselm, 2016; Phadke, 2018; Kohl and Farthing, 2012; Vikström, 2017). Construction and deconstruction of resources also occur when framing resource management practices. Råstad Bjørst (2016) explains the opposing and shifting views of Greenland’s resource management and how mining on Greenland became mining for Greenland. She focuses on how uranium was reconstructed as a resource by local, regional, and global agendas and discourses. Analyzing such discourses allows us to understand the role resources play in a larger societal arena, as part of both the national and global economic and political scene. Such narratives unpacked and analyzed by environmental historians and historians of technology, affect the management and use of resources and the opposition to them. These analyses reveal fundamental information about the long term dynamics and impact on environmental, spatial, and resource policies. The articles in this special issue provide a different take on the way resources are constructed as national, and its subsequent effects. Anna Åberg & Maja Fjӕstad suggest that the idea of nationally extracted uranium helped create the concept of nuclear power as a national energy source, even though the nuclear fuel cycle is a transnational process. Bekasova’s contribution highlights national efforts in institutionalizing material sciences and organizing geological surveys and mapping, showing the interdependence of resource nationalist politics and intensive scientific engagement in the material. Karl Bruno, Hanna Vikström, and Frank Veraart, Jan-Pieter Smits and Erik van der Vleuten analyze the interwoven nature of international resource flows connecting the national and industrial interests of countries in the global north with the global south.

contributions traces resources from their construction all the way to consumption. We conclude by discussing potential avenues for research in the history of resources. 2. Construction of resources A common notion among the contributing authors is that technological developments are historically contingent processes. The contexts shape how technologies emerge and evolve. Historians of technology and science and technology studies scholars apply the notion of social construction to show how multiple actors actively construct and (re) produce the meaning and usages of technologies over time (Bijker et al., 1989; Bijker, 1997; Pinch and Bijker, 1984; Hughes, 1983). Equally, the meaning, value and application of material resources can vary through time and in different societal groups. Against this background, natural resources are materialities which human actors transform from matter into a commodity, a resource with economic value. Already in 1951, resource economist Erich Zimmermann argued in his book World Resources and Industries, “resources are not, they become” (Zimmermann, 1951, 15). Resources only come into being when humans define them as valuable, and what is valuable is highly dependent on the political, economic, social and cultural context (Bridge, 2009; Avango et al., 2013). Bridge (2009) points out that whether a material is classified as a resource or not tells us more about society than about the material itself, since labelling a substance as a resource depends on the physical world, knowledge, infrastructure, technology, and politics. A fascinating example is described by Gabrielle Hecht in her book Being Nuclear, in which she analyses the construction and deconstruction of uranium ore alongside the construction and maintenance of uranium markets. Before World War II, uranium from South African mines was discarded as useless. By the 1950s and 1960s, the native peoples of Gabon, Madagascar and Namibia still considered the ore as pieces of rock, whereas it became a vital resource for the French nuclear industry (Hecht, 2012). Resources are constantly being revaluated in an ever-changing political, economic, social and cultural context. Thomas Narins (2017) shows that due to the sustainability debate, lithium has been revaluated as a critical commodity in battery manufacturing, especially for electric cars. This has led to competing interests from multinational firms as well as nation states. Subsequently, fossil fuels have been gradually deconstructed as energy resources of the future, whereas the mineral, needed for manufacturing renewable energy, becomes increasingly valuable (Narins, 2017; Odell et al., 2018; European Union, 2008). Today, these (de)construction processes are at the heart of developing ideas about sustainability and a more circular economy; and they will continue to evolve, in close partnership with technological development. All the contributions in this special issue confirm that resources are continually constructed through science and technology as well as politics and policies. Alexandra Bekasova in particular highlights how the institutionalization of material sciences altered the perceptions of stone, from an abundant material to a valuable industrial resource in nineteenth-century Russia. Hanna Vikström analyses more contemporary resource (re)construction phenomena in metal extraction debates concerning the transition to sustainability energy production.

4. Resource flows as transnational practice While nations have been obsessed with controlling resource flows and constructing national narratives, the fact remains that most resource chains today are transnational. We, therefore, need to study the relationship between global, national and local contexts, while also questioning these categories because they cannot be considered in isolation. In the history of technology, such investigations have created two types of transnational analysis. The first, inspired by political science studies on international relations, focuses on the roles of supranational actors such as engineering communities, multinationals, and NGOs. These actors shape socio-technical systems across borders and beyond the geopolitical and diplomatic structures of the nation state (Kaiser and Schot, 2014; Kohlraush and Trischler, 2014). The second approach, stemming from globalization studies, focuses on the interlinkages between local, national and international developments. This approach critically analyses rather than assumes national interests as the main driver of developments. As shown in the literature, actors other than states have played a key role in developing infrastructures across borders (Van der Vleuten, 2008; Högselius et al., 2016; Van der Vleuten and Feys, 2016; Van der Vleuten and Janáč, 2016). Other scholars show how nation states have become involuntary carriers of multinational infrastructures. In the case of the European natural gas grid, what started as small bilateral pipeline networks, slowly became continentreaching infrastructures, over which nation states did not have the same

3. The importance of resources to nation states Historically, resources have been considered one of the main building blocks of the modern nation state. Resources are framed not only as the basis of modernity and welfare but also of the economic survival of a nation state. These arguments served as motivation to enhance the value of resource exploitation and give less priority to other values and activities such as common land ownership, recreation and environmental considerations, as well as indigenous peoples’ claims to land. 3

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company in Liberia, which as a technopolitical project, became embedded in that country’s social and economic change.

control (Högselius et al., 2013). Moreover, nation states are only one of several entities shaping a resource chain, and their roles are difficult to define. Thus, questioning a nation’s position in resource chains helps us to assess the role of nations in a broader global context. One way of looking at both national and transnational contexts and how they overlap in resource history is through the concept of resource spaces (Disco and Kranakis, 2013). These are not strictly defined, either by the geographic extent of a resource or the geographic profile of a space. Instead, they are constituted within an international space defined by a combination of technology, politics, resource properties, and associated geomorphologies through which resources travel. By examining the spatial movement of a resource and how this links local, national, and transnational governance as well as technical and geographical characteristics, we can go beyond set views of national and transnational, showing how they relate and overlap. All the resources in question inhabit such spaces, and our contributors investigate the broader institutional and (trans)national contextual characteristics. Studying the flows of extractive resources can also give us a deeper understanding of the relationship between the local and the global. While it may be easy to assume that a resource flow becomes transnational when a resource passes a national border, this is not necessarily the case. The first construction of a resource is often already done in an international market context. As an example, in Alexandra Bekasovas article, the interest in Russian limestone springs from the increased need of imported building materials. In this sense, none of the resources that are discussed in this special issue are ever only national in character. Instead, each contribution sheds light on the entangled processes that ensure resources can be constructed as national and transnational at the same time. Thus, the topics throughout this special issue shift between local, national and international contexts. For instance, Hanna Vikström sheds light on how global technological trends along with national interests, transnational actors, and local communities are together shaping transnational resource chains. Anna Åberg & Maja Fjӕstad and Karl Bruno examine the institutional development of transitional resource flows, while Frank Veraart, Jan-Pieter Smits & Erik van der Vleuten focus on the historically developed trade-offs in well-being, economy, and ecology that comes with transnational resource flows.

6. Resource flows as (global) political power hierarchies Resource chains have been global for many centuries. Historically, most resources were not transported across long distances. During the 20th century, local resource flows were transformed by societal processes including economical depletion, wage developments, geographical conflicts, health, safety and environmental regulations. New modes of transport and relatively low fuel prices alongside with geographical distribution of resources opened up developments of global trade and international supply chains. Over time, the lion’s share of resource extraction has transferred to the global south, while its use, refining, and manufacturing takes place in the global north, continuing to enhance old colonialist relations between the global north and the global south. Resources therefore not only shaped modernization of society, societal pressure, environmental awareness and other societal changes also influenced the dynamics of global resource chains. The global north today is highly dependent on resources in Africa as well as in South America and China. Tracing the material histories of resource extraction and circulation helps us to comprehend the complex and historically rooted north-south relations. The mining, production, and consumption of resources affect social, economic, and environmental developments both locally and globally. Today these global entanglements call for a global view on resource challenges and conflicts, particularly concerning social and environmental sustainability issues (Sachs and Warner, 1995; Ross and Voeten, 2013; Faundez and Tan, 2015; Hennchen, 2015; Tan and Faundez, 2017; Omoteso and Yusuf, 2017). Transcontinental resource supply chains connect sustainability issues in the global north and south. So-called ‘sustainability telecouplings’ literature suggests that through trade and other long-distance connections, low-income countries bear the social and environmental sustainability costs for the economic sustainability gains of high-income countries (Liu et al., 2013, 2018; Hull and Liu, 2018). The construction of resource spaces includes the creation of power hierarchies. A transnational view of resource spaces and their variations over time sheds light on some of these political structures, including resource colonialism and resource nationalism. Companies and states have long attempted to use other countries’ resources for their own gains – for example by exploiting colonies’ natural resources (Butler, 2007; Beinart and Hughes, 2007; Tully 2011; Harp, 2016). But there are also numerous examples of countries trying to use and profit from their own resources. However, geography is a crucial component in understanding resource nationalism, as claimed by John Childs (2016), and we also need to account for power hierarchies within countries, including new spaces and new frontiers not necessarily governed by nation states. Controlling resource deposits was and continues to be a central strategy for countries and companies in the global arena, and a way to enforce power structures (Vikström, 2017; Lesser, 1989). This was particularly prominent in protectionist times and will probably continue to be important in this era’s increasing competition for resources. All the authors address international power hierarchies. Bekasova analyses the role of global knowledge, practices and competition in establishing Russian regulations and standards. Anna Åberg & Maja Fjӕstad and Karl Bruno study the power and international technopolitics in Sweden’s nuclear and iron mining context. The shifts in global power hierarchies in the mineral extractive industries feature in Hanna Vikström’s analysis. Frank Veraart, Jan-Pieter Smits & Erik van der Vleuten investigate the sustainability trade-offs of the Netherlands – Nigerian trade in crude oil. Their analyses underline the importance of oil production for well-being, social, economic and environmental developments in both countries.

5. Technopolitics of resource flows Any investigation into the movement and use of resources needs to unpack the technopolitics involved. Although it may be a mundane observation that politics is a major feature of resource practices, the concept of technopolitics highlights that designing and using technology to enact politics are strategies that produce artefacts and knowledge (Hecht, 1998; Hecht and Edwards, 2010). Such technopolitical practices can be deliberate or unintended, and happen in a myriad of ways (Mitchell, 2002). All resource flows are mediated by technological infrastructures, often transnational, whose mere existence is down to technopolitics. Besides, the extracted resources themselves may become used as technopolitical objects, making them vehicles of technopolitical action. Unpacking such processes helps us to interpret how engineers and politicians use already defined resources and their flows for political gains, also to create new resource infrastructures with inherent political goals. The contributions focusing on the (inter)national management of resources elaborate on the notion that technological development is not neutral. Technopolitics, despite often being intentional actions of those ostensibly controlling the resource system, may have unintended outcomes, due to changing social and ecological contexts, appropriation of resources and technology by other actor groups, or the unpredictability of complex technical systems. As well as politics, the articles in this special issue address resource flows in relation to technological development. One interesting example by Karl Bruno concerns a mining 4

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Fig. 1. Overview showing to which parts of the resource chain the authors’ articles refer.

7. Contributions

limited control in the 1970s. It faced major insecurities, both in the international nuclear fuel market and regarding national political support for nuclear power. SKBF's views on uranium, as well as its role in Swedish national politics, switched dramatically over the 1970s following changes in the transnational flows of uranium. In this case, geopolitics is closely connected with technopolitics, since uranium mining's technical processes of conversion, enrichment and fuel production, are only available in certain countries and under certain conditions. Åberg & Fjӕstad show how SKBF acted in a constantly shifting national and international arena to secure a rapidly expanding nuclear system, while at the same time legitimizing its actions to the Swedish government. In this process, uranium is perceived in different ways: as national or international, scarce or plentiful, and to varying degrees an economic or political tool. Karl Bruno explores the resource history of major mining company LAMCO, extracting iron ore in Liberia. The company was strategically and operationally dominated by Swedish actors. Bruno considers LAMCO a technopolitical project both in the context of Cold War geopolitics and Liberian national development. This is an interesting example of how Sweden, a smaller industrialized state with next to no territorial colonial past, became involved in global resource markets and north-south resource flows. Bruno helps us to understand national and multinational extractive industries in postcolonial Africa, their interactions with state authorities, and their social, economic, and political impacts. LAMCO became embedded in Liberian social and economic change, both intentionally by the government and unintentionally through others. Frank Veraart, Jan-Pieter Smits, and Erik van der Vleuten take a novel approach to study the internationally entangled sustainability developments of resource flows. They juxtapose and bring into the conversation Nigerian and Dutch sustainability history, the connection being multinational Royal Dutch Shell's crude oil trade. They focus on the trade-offs between Nigeria’s economic, social, and ecological developments. Although material well-being, education, and living conditions improved in Nigeria, the oil-producing region of the Niger Delta fared badly. Oil spills, flaring and other types of pollution deteriorated the standard of living in this vulnerable environment. These were the root causes of local resistance and violent conflicts, fuelled by cultural tensions and corruption. Growing attention to corporate social responsibility for environmental issues and international collaborations of pressure groups entangled Nigerian and Dutch developments. The authors highlight that these industrial activities resulted in economic growth and improved social well-being in both countries, but at the expense of the environment. Interestingly, qualitative investigations reveal how the issues facing the two countries differed in persistence and magnitude. Whereas local nuisance in the Netherlands triggered

The empirical historical studies in this special issue show that the five perspectives outlined above play a role in every link of a resource chain. By engaging with them, we can gain a deeper insight into the ways resource flows are constructed, interwoven, used as well as local and global societal and environmental effects of resource extraction. The contributions of this special issue are presented in the order of the developments and effects of resources flows, from the construction of resources to the impacts of extraction and use (see Fig. 1). Alexandra Bekasova takes us to nineteenth century imperial Russia to analyze how abundant stone construction materials became important industrial resources. She focuses on the interrelations between the institutionalization of material sciences and the use of materials, highlighting the role of institutional settings in defining properties and quality. Her case study on Russia traces the changes not only in perceptions of resources but also the relationship between technology and society over time. She describes the role of technology and science in these perceptions of “development” when limestone and clay became visible and governable. Her article also discusses the interrelationship between the establishment of national regulations and standards and the global circulation of technical knowledge and testing practices. This historical account highlights the role of institutional settings for defining properties and qualities of building materials. Hanna Vikström explores how the renowned British Mining Journal discusses new values of metals used in renewable energy technologies between 1981 and 2014. Investigating the sustainability narrative, Vikström sees that the trends towards batteries, wind, and solar power have shifted global dependencies on fossil fuels to critical metals. Metals like cobalt, lithium, platina group metals and rare earth elements, previously used in various technologies, have become crucial constituents in renewable energy technologies. Consequently, mining companies view climate change as an opportunity to benefit from a changing market, but extracting those metals is linked with supply, political, environmental, and economic risks. Additionally, this trend perpetuates the (geo)political dependencies of countries in the global north on resources from the global south. This development is strongly correlated with the development of new technologies and the narrative required to reduce carbon dioxide emissions through these new technologies. It gives perspectives on the consequences of resource extraction and how they affect the local and global environment. Moving from the mining and definition side of the resource chain, Anna Åberg and Maja Fjӕstad analyse uranium import and export from the viewpoint of SKBF, the Swedish nuclear fuel supply company that was created when Sweden installed its first nuclear reactors. SKBF needed to secure nuclear fuel on a market over which it had very

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national environmental legislation in the 1970s, it was human rights violations and subsequent international consternation in the 1990s that put Nigeria’s awareness of pollution and inequality on the agenda.

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8. Outlook Historical analysis is crucial in helping us understand the temporal changes and hidden dynamics of resource chains. We see the long-term institutional flexibilities, (re)definitions of resources, and changing local and transnational interests. Our contributions go beyond merely historical analyses. They present a usable past, historical narratives that advance our understanding of the driving forces behind these processes of change. Examples from different parts of the world focus on resources ranging from stone, to oil, uranium, and metals, placing the role of extractive industries in a broad international constellation of actors. Future research on the history of resources might explore the perception of resources and power relations. One possibility would be to add more local perspectives on the construction and management of resources and their interplay with other geographical and geopolitical levels. Combining the analyses of resource politics with technopolitics and geopolitics, could reveal new patterns. Another avenue would be to examine the discourses and visual technologies used to explain resource needs, handling, and application, not only by their proponents but also by opponents and stakeholders affected by activities in the resource chains. As the first step in this direction, our contributions shed light on the power hierarchies and technopolitics that shape resource chains and their impact on the distribution of wealth and environmental challenges. In doing so, the authors reveal how the activities of creating, capturing, and circulating resources are in turn shaping society. As the transnational nature of resource flows connects and impacts our global world and will continue to do so, learning from the historical processes of constructing and managing resources is a timely endeavour. Acknowledgments This special issue originates from the workshop ‘Challenging Europe: Technology, environment and the quest for resource security’ held June 2018 at KTH Stockholm. We would like to express our gratitude to the organizer Per Högselius, Matthias Heymann and Elena Kochetkova, coordinators of the Research Group Technology, Environment and Resources of the Tensions of Europe Network. We also want to thank all the contributors of this workshop, the commentators and discussants during the panel ‘Creating and Circulating Commodities’, at the 2019 Tensions of Europe conference in Luxemburg, and the efforts of two anonymous reviewers of this article. Their questions, comments and suggestions were highly appreciated and improved earlier versions of this article. Furthermore we want to mention our thank our fellow contributors Alexandra Bekasova, Karl Bruno, Maja Fjæstad, Jan-Pieter Smits and Erik van de Vleuten for their efforts in the development of this special issue. References Åberg, A., 2013. A Gap In the Grid: Attempts to Introduce Natural Gas in Sweden 19671991. Diss. KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. Abuya, W.O., 2016. Mining conflicts and corporate social responsibility: titanium mining in Kwale, Kenya. Extr. Ind. Soc. 3 (2), 485–493. Avango, D., Nilsson, A., Roberts, P., 2013. Assessing arctic futures: voices, resources and governance. Polar J. 3 (2), 431–446. Baker, J.M., Westman, C.N., 2018. Extracting knowledge: social science, environmental impact assessment, and indigenous consultation in the oil sands of Alberta, Canada. Extr. Ind. Soc. 5 (1), 144–153. Beckert, S., 2014. Empire of Cotton: A Global History. Alfred A. Knopf, New York. Beinart, W., Hughes, L., 2007. Environment and Empire. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Bijker, W., Hughes, T.P., Pinch, T.J. (Eds.), 1989. The Social Construction of Technological Systems. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. Bijker, W., 1997. Of Bicycles, Bakelites and Bulbs, Towards a Theory of Sociotechnical Change. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

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