Uranium, geoinformatics, and the economic image of mineral exploration

Schilling, Tom

doi:10.1016/j.endeavour.2013.05.002

Cited by 5 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 20 publications

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“…12 For important exceptions, see Lepinay (2011) and Riles (2011). 13 For a discussion of similar processes in geostatistical representation, see Schilling (2013). 14 For a discussion of the relationship between GPS and the changing understandings of territoriality in the twentieth century, see Rankin (2011).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The infrastructure of markets: From electric power to electronic data

Özden‐Schilling

2016

Economic Anthropology

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Following the partial deregulation of the electricity industry in the 1990s, a number of electricity markets were instituted in the United States. As relatively new experiments, electricity markets open up possibilities for anthropologists to see markets as infrastructures of information. I argue that making markets in electricity has been a project in reorganizing information relationships, transferring the burden to organize information onto market actors, making them into data processors and the markets themselves into infrastructures of information. This article is part of a yearlong multilocale ethnographic project that seeks to understand how traders, analysts, engineers, and economists make markets in electricity in the United States. It draws on 5 months of participant observation at a market intelligence company that produces data and databases and sells price forecasts to traders in the deregulated markets of electricity. It maps the work practices of data cleaning and maintenance—a kind of labor I call “database work.”

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The infrastructure of markets: From electric power to electronic data

Özden‐Schilling

2016

Economic Anthropology

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“…High smoking rates in the community has further increased the health risk. The study is also relevant for other Inuit communities in rest of the circumpolar regions (Canada, Alaska, and Greenland) due to high rates of lung cancer, 15,16,24 smoking, 14,24 poor housing condition, 13,25,26 and geological features 12,27,28 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In other words, there is a probability of existence of a high-risk community in a low-risk health region. In this regard, Canada's Inuit ( Eskimo ) population is more vulnerable due to (a) living in remote northern parts of the country known for high uranium deposition, 12 (b) poorer housing conditions (28% of houses need major repair vs 7% for non-indigenous houses), 13 and (c) high smoking rates (39% of the population above 12 years of age vs 15% for non-indigenous population of the same age group) 14 . The rates of lung cancer in Inuit men and women in Canada are the highest in the world, and increasing.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Indoor Radon in Microgeological Setting of an Indigenous Community in Canada: A Pilot Study for Hazard Identification

Sarkar

Wilton

Fitzgerald

2017

Int J Occup Environ Med

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“…As Ferry shows through her analysis of precious metals mining and marketization, the lingering association between speculation and immateriality continues to have tremendous consequences for how (and whether) the artifacts and practices associated with speculative narratives come to be understood in ethical terms (see also Bear, 2020). This kind of tension affects all mineral prospects, which must be subject to physical sampling processes before becoming legible as vehicles of investment, since each phase of these sampling processes generates documents that may circulate as components of speculative narratives (Schilling, 2013; Weszkalnys, 2015; Wood, 2016). Rather than naturalizing the material backdrop of a story by facilitating virtual witnessing, in other words, narratives that come to be marked as speculative can also transform otherwise trivial ‘concrete’ details into suspicious signs of artifice and immateriality.…”

Section: Literary Technologies In Crisismentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In recent years, though, fluctuating commodity prices and regulatory regimes have dramatically altered the temporalities of global extraction (Ferry & Limbert, 2008; Weszkalnys, 2015; Wood, 2016). For mineral deposits in North America, industry advocates complain, exploration companies now require more than a decade to ‘prove up’ prospects into producing mines (Schilling, 2013). Promoters of ‘serious projects’, Jack and others lament, are struggling to hold the interest of restless investors.…”

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confidence: 99%

Trust in numbers: Serious numbers and speculative fictions in rare earth elements exploration

Özden-Schilling

2023

Soc Stud Sci

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In the early 2010s, a spectacular fall in prices for a class of mineral commodities called the rare earth elements (REEs) and the collapse of hundreds of new exploration companies made clear the fragility of the high-risk markets around these companies and the strategies of legitimation that supported them. New regulatory processes built around technical disclosures generated vast stores of geotechnical data. Rather than generating trust among market actors, however, these processes dramatically altered the temporalities of global extraction and energized unruly narrative spaces. In their efforts to keep mineral claims active and companies afloat, REE-focused exploration experts have struggled to navigate different arenas of discussion while holding their respective logics in tension. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with exploration geologists and promoters, this article examines how experts federate flows of ‘serious’ and ‘speculative’ information in both carefully regulated reports and rumor-filled online forums. Such spaces are organized by aesthetic conventions and social criteria for establishing persuasiveness—forms that STS scholars have long analyzed as literary technologies. Rather than helping to secure experts’ authority, however, I argue that the diverse literary technologies that now dominate exploration promotion and finance work have radically redistributed interpretive roles. In their struggles to mediate senses of ‘crisis’ endemic within venture markets, exploration experts must enact the ideals undergirding new regulatory requirements even as they learn to defer to the speculative musings of others.

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Uranium, geoinformatics, and the economic image of mineral exploration

Cited by 5 publications

References 20 publications

The infrastructure of markets: From electric power to electronic data

The infrastructure of markets: From electric power to electronic data

Indoor Radon in Microgeological Setting of an Indigenous Community in Canada: A Pilot Study for Hazard Identification

Trust in numbers: Serious numbers and speculative fictions in rare earth elements exploration

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