The vital materiality of aluminum: Light modernity and the global Atlantic

Abstract

This article considers the significance of new ontological approaches to vibrant materialities and to mobilities research for re-thinking the globality of the Atlantic world. It does so through a study of bauxite mining and aluminum smelting as an agent of globalization and a mobile materialization of uneven global modernities. Aluminum can be thought of not just as an inert metal that is acted upon, but as a complex agent enrolled into transnational circuits, structuring and structured by the connections between them. The first section begins by sketching the idea of the global Atlantic; the second section focuses on methods of "following things" as a productive way of doing global history; and the third gives a brief account of the mobilities and materialities of aluminum based in part on the author's book Aluminum Dreams: The Making of Light Modernity. In following the material assemblages and energetic transformations of bauxite/aluminum, this account seeks to bring to light the long-distance trans-oceanic relations that connect Atlantic political economies into global political ecologies. © 2013 Taylor and Francis.