Aluminum Ore: The Political Economy of the Global Bauxite Industry

Front Cover
Robin S. Gendron, Mats Ingulstad, Espen Storli
UBC Press, Sep 28, 2013 - Business & Economics - 400 pages

As the key component in aluminum production, bauxite became one of the most important minerals of the last one hundred years. But around the world its effects on people and economies varied broadly -- for some it meant jobs, progress, or a political advantage over rival nations, but for many others, it meant exploitation, pollution, or the destruction of a way of life.

Aluminum Ore explores the often overlooked history of bauxite in the twentieth century, and in doing so examines the social, political, and economic forces that shaped the time. Its development became a strategic industry during the First World War, and then the subject of international struggle for dominance during the Second World War. Yet in post-war years it was globalization, not military conquest, that expanded global value chains. The extraction of bauxite -- a mineral found mostly in the developing world -- was made profitable by the growth of multinational corporations and the spread of globalization, leaving behind a troubled cultural and environmental legacy.

In this wide-ranging collection, scholars from around the world consider multiple perspectives on this history -- from Guinea to Nazi Germany to Jamaica -- all while examining the central place of one commodity in a time of change.
 

Contents

Opening Pandoras Bauxite
1
1 The Global Race for Bauxite 190040
24
2 Of the Highest Imperial Importance
53
3 Nazi Germanys Pursuit of Bauxite and Alumina
79
4 National Security Business?
107
5 The Soviet Unions Bauxite Problem
138
6 Greece Has Been Endowed by Nature with This Precious Material
158
7 The Volta River Project and Decolonization 194557
185
9 Transnational Restructuring and the Jamaican Bauxite Industry
238
10 Issues of Governance Liberalization Policy Space and the Challenges of Development
268
11 White Metal
302
12 Battles over Bauxite in East India
328
13 Success without Bauxite
353
Contributors
373
Index
378
Copyright

8 Canada and the Nationalization of Alcans Bauxite Operations in Guinea and Guyana
211

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