Extraction in motion: circulation of capital, state power, and logistical urbanization in Chile’s mining regions

Abstract

Through an investigation of port cities in northern Chile, this article assesses the territorial and sociopolitical ramifications of the logistics turn in the extractive industries. The systematic adoption of organizational imperatives towards flow, connectivity, and speed in mining operations, has spearheaded a modality of logistical urbanization in which the governance of mineral flows assumes increasing salience vis-à-vis sites of extraction narrowly considered. This evolving modality of territorial organization has underpinned the rise of a transpacific logistical corridor that weaves together multiple mineral deposits in the Chilean Andes with a wide array of port and manufacturing cities in East Asia. Through a materialist reading of the capitalist state, the paper suggests that the metabolic flows that animate this complex socioecological system are mediated by distinct, yet overlapping tendencies towards the internationalization and the concentration of the political authority of the late liberal state.