On the multiple frontiers of extraction: excavating contemporary capitalism

ABSTRACT

Understanding the intensification and expansion of extractive industries in contemporary capitalism requires an approach attentive not only to the literal forms of extraction prevalent in mining and agribusiness but also to new fronts of extraction emerging in activities such as data mining and biocapitalism. This article introduces the concept of operations of capital to trace connections between the expansive logic of extraction and capitalist activity in the domains of logistics and finance. Arguing that extractive operations are at large across these domains, we explore their relevance for capital’s relation with its multiple outsides. The resulting analysis provides a basis for mapping struggles against the changing forms of dispossession and exploitation enabled by extraction.

KEYWORDS:

• Extraction
• logistics
• finance
• capitalism
• neoliberalism
• mining

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Sandro Mezzadra teaches political theory at the University of Bologna and is an adjunct fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society of the Western Sydney University. He is currently visiting research fellow at the Humboldt University, Berlin (BIM – Berliner Institut für empirische Migrations- und Integrationsforschung). In the last decade, his work has particularly centred on the relations between globalization, migration, and political processes as well as on postcolonial theory and criticism. He is an active participant in the ‘post-workerist’ debates and one of the founders of the website Euronomade (www.euronomade.info). His books include Diritto di fuga. Migrazioni, cittadinanza, globalizzazione (‘The right to escape: Migration, citizenship, globalization’, ombre corte, 2006), La condizione postcoloniale. Storia e politica nel presente globale (‘The postcolonial condition: History and politics in the global present’, ombre corte, 2008) and Nei cantieri marxiani. Il soggetto e la sua produzione (‘In the Marxian Workshops. The Subject and its Production’, Manifestolibri, 2014). With Brett Neilson he is the author of Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor (Duke University Press, 2013).

Brett Neilson is a Research Director at the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University. His recent work has focused on relations between globalization, migration, labour, and technology. He is the author, with Sandro Mezzadra, of Border as Method, or, the Multiplication of Labor (Duke University Press, 2013). With Sandro Mezzadra, he also recently co-edited an issue of South Atlantic Quarterly entitled ‘Extraction, Logistics, and Finance’. With Ned Rossiter, he has coordinated the projects Transit Labour: Circuits, Regions, Borders (http://transitlabour.asia) and Logistical Worlds: Infrastructure, Software, Labour (http://logisticalworlds.org). With Ned Rossiter and Tanya Notley, he is currently coordinating the project Data Farms; Circuits, Territory, Labour.