In the 1950s and 1960s, vast quantities of mercury were extracted in southwest China to support the modernisation of the socialist state and were praised by the Premier at the time as “patriotic mercury.” My project investigates the history of mercury mining in socialist China, challenging the notion that minerals are merely part of an inert nature, passively awaiting human exploration or exploitation. It explores the insufficiently understood entanglement of materiality and affect in resource geography, particularly how the materiality of mercury and the affective intensity of patriotism were intertwined in shaping both the embodied experiences of miners and the broader socio-environmental landscape.
Drawing on archival research, oral history, and ethnographic fieldwork at former mercury-mining heritage sites, the project examines how affect shapes the relationships among minerals, geological environments, workers’ bodies, extractive infrastructures, and mining regimes, presenting a more dynamic political picture than previous mining histories to develop new narratives of abstraction for the current era of environmental crisis.
