Living Minerals

Name: Living Minerals
Price: 115 AUD
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ISBN: 9780262553704

Nature, Trade, and Power in the Race for Lithium

Javiera Barandiaran

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English

MIT Press
17 February 2026

Technology: general issues

A sobering investigation of the rush for lithium for electric vehicles, the problematic history of lithium mining, and the consequences for sustainability.

A sobering investigation of the rush for lithium for electric vehicles, the problematic history of lithium mining, and the consequences for sustainability.

Consumers today are buying electric vehicles with lithium-ion batteries motivated by the belief that they are doing good and decarbonizing society. But is sustainable lithium extraction possible? In Living Minerals, Javiera Barandiaran examines the history of lithium mining and uses during the twentieth century, with a specific focus on the two oldest brine-lithium mines- Silver Peak, Nevada, and Salar de Atacama, Chile, where lithium is found as one more element in a liquid mix of salts, minerals, and organisms.

For six decades, mining experts have failed to ask about water usage, about waste or brine leakage, and about the ecosystem impacts in delicate deserts. Instead, they have relied on various fictions about the size of reserves, the fate of leaked brine, or the value of waste in facilitating mine development. These fictions, rooted in brine-lithium's material qualities, could be sustained thanks to powerful mining memories that celebrated resource nationalism. Unique in its historical and multidimensional approach to minerals and mining, based on the novel Rights of Nature paradigm, and using new archival materials from both Chile and the US, the book argues that decarbonizing society requires that we reckon with these realities-or risk deepening our dependency on an unsustainable mining industry.

By: Javiera Barandiaran
Imprint: MIT Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm,
Weight: 369g
ISBN: 9780262553704
ISBN 10: 0262553708
Pages: 280
Publication Date: 17 February 2026
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Acknowledgments Acronyms and Company Names Map 1: Western US Map 2: Northern Chile Map 3: Atacama Desert and Salt Flat, Chile Introduction 1 Exhausting Natures: Fragile Deserts, Constant Science 2 Mining Memories: The Nitrate and Copper Trades 3 Estimating Lithium Reserves for Tomorrow’s Energy Technologies 4 Industrial Science and Desert Brines in Nevada and Chile 5 Managing Brines for Future Generations Conclusion Appendix: Archive Abbreviations and Interviews Completed Notes References Index

Javiera Barandiaran is Associate Professor in Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Director of UCSB's Center for Restorative Environmental Work. She has published four books, including Science and Environment in Chile (MIT Press). For her research on lithium mining, she won a Berlin Prize from the American Academy in Berlin and a fellowship at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center.

Reviews for Living Minerals: Nature, Trade, and Power in the Race for Lithium

ENDORSEMENTS “Lithium appears to offer us the hope of a renewable future. This powerful book shows us how much our thinking about the history and life of minerals must change for that hope to survive.” —Timothy Mitchell, author of Carbon Democracy “Drawing on deep historical work, Living Minerals proposes a new paradigm for approaching the world’s resources in a time of planetary crisis: Rather than resource nationalism, we should understand minerals as parts of the ecosystems under threat of extinction. Brilliant!” —Gabrielle Hecht, author of Residual Governance and Being Nuclear ""Telling the history of lithium mining in the US and Chile, this book reexamines nationalist memories of mining glory and growth, opening up the imagination to post-extractivist, post-growth alternatives."" —Giorgos Kallis, Professor, Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies and the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology, Autonomous University of Barcelona