Article ID: CBB544660599

Environmental Alchemy: Mercury-Gold Amalgamation Mining and the Transformation of the Earth (2023)

unapi

Wherever mercury-gold amalgamation mining unfolds, alchemical processes abound. They are there as catalytic agents forming amalgams at atomic levels. They are there as cultural agents transforming rocks into cell phones and all kinds of consumer goods. And they are there as ideological agents mutually translating human understandings across whole worlds we describe as the sciences, humanities, and social sciences. These processes, we argue, are made more legible – more readily perceived and conceptualised – by peering through the lens of environmental alchemy, a new critical framework in which we apply the historical use of alchemical terms to investigations of environmental change, and to understand the extraordinary complexity that gold and mercury set in motion when mining entangles nature and culture.

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Authors & Contributors
Luzzini, Francesco
Auricchio, Laura
Bilak, Donna
Cook, Elizabeth Heckendorn
Harper, Kyle
He, Zhiguo
Journals
Ambix: Journal of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry
Comparative Studies in Society and History
Earth Sciences History: Journal of the History of the Earth Sciences Society
Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient
Llull: Revista de la Sociedad Española de Historia de las Ciencias y de las Técnicas
Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science
Publishers
Franco Angeli
McGill-Queen's University Press
Rowman & Littlefield
University of North Carolina Press
University of Pennsylvania Press
University of Washington Press
Concepts
Environmental history
Mines and mining
Science and culture
Gold
Alchemy
Nature and its relationship to culture; human-nature relationships
People
Agricola, Georgius
Chastelet, Jean du
De Bertereau, Martine
Foucault, Michel
Kircher, Athanasius
Mathesius, Johann
Time Periods
Ancient
Early modern
19th century
Medieval
Renaissance
16th century
Places
China
Europe
United States
Alps (Europe)
Alaska (U.S.)
Southeast Asia
Institutions
UNESCO
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