Description
In the rush to electrify vehicle markets in the context of climate breakdown, so-called critical minerals are being invested with new meanings, political significance, and economic value. Element 28 (nickel) was once dirty, cheap, and common, but now it’s clean, green, and ‘hotter than gold’, according to the investment press. Nickel therefore finds itself at the centre of struggles over value and meaning which relate closely to struggles over the notably stubborn racial hierarchies of the global capitalist system. Nickel, I argue here, might be the perfect national commodity, serving Indonesia’s long-time quest to break with the law of worldwide value by capturing downstream value-added processing and production. The entanglements of extractive US and Chinese finance in Indonesian commodity production, however, complicate the pursuit of nickel sovereignty. At the same time, the notable contradictions of mineral sovereignty and green transition are evident in the socioecological effects on nickel extraction and processing frontiers, where various forms of expropriation, contamination, pollution, and exploitation invest nickel with distinct meanings for those communities affected. This article works through the changing meanings of Element 28 in relation to the hierarchies of raced finance, political projects of value, and the socioecological contradictions manifest along contemporary nickel frontiers.
