LABOR: Bodies of Extraction and the Making of Urban Environments

Abstract

The text interrogate the present condition of resource extraction through an emphasis on the geographies of labor resulting from an upgraded technological basis of mineral production and circulation. Through the specific case of the mining supply chain in Chile, and from a value-theoretical perspective, this article challenges the idea that automation will spell the end of work. It shows how the expansion of the productive attributes of the workers in charge of the most complex parts of the mining process (geological modeling, engineering, programming of equipment, etc.) is directly connected to the degradation of those of an everincreasing contingent of precarious, non-wage, racialized, and gendered workers. The productive whole that results from the internal polarization of the productive capacities of the organs of the collective laborer, I suggest, is not consciously regulated but becomes a form of existence of capital. With this, I reveal the centrality of the commodification of labor-power to the capitalist production of space. The exploitation of a diverse multiplicity of concrete labors manifests itself spatially through the production of an uneven, expanding fabric of urbanization: cosmopolitan, green, and smart cities for the highly skilled workers of the mining industry; polluted towns, shanty towns, and overcrowded camp sites for its invisible workforces and its expanding surplus populations.