Carbon Technocracy: Energy Regimes in Modern East Asia

The coal-mining town of Fushun in China's Northeast is a monument to the fantasies of a fossil-fueled future and the technologies mobilized to turn those dreams into reality. Victor Seow's book, Carbon Technocracy, charts how the fossil fuel economy emerged in tandem with the rise of the modern technocratic state, relying heavily on human labor and labor control techniques. Fushun's aggressive fossil-fueled development holds urgent lessons as we confront a planetary crisis precipitated by our extravagant consumption of carbon.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 376 pages
Publication date: 10 May 2023
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press

The coal-mining town of Fushun in China's Northeast is home to a massive open pit that was first excavated in the early twentieth century. Over the ensuing decades, the pit expanded like a widening maw as various Chinese and Japanese states sought to extract Fushun's supposedly "inexhaustible" carbon resources. Today, the depleted mine that remains is a wondrous and terrifying monument to fantasies of a fossil-fueled future and the technologies mobilized to turn those developmentalist dreams into reality.

In Carbon Technocracy, Victor Seow uses the remarkable story of the Fushun colliery to chart how the fossil fuel economy emerged in tandem with the rise of the modern technocratic state. Taking coal as an essential feedstock of national wealth and power, Chinese and Japanese bureaucrats, engineers, and industrialists deployed new technologies like open-pit mining and hydraulic stowage in pursuit of intensive energy extraction. But as much as these mine operators idealized the might of fossil fuel-driven machines, their extractive efforts nevertheless relied heavily on the human labor that those devices were expected to displace. Under the carbon energy regime, countless workers in Fushun and elsewhere would be subjected to invasive techniques of labor control, ever-escalating output targets, and the dangers of an increasingly exploited earth.

Although Fushun is no longer the coal capital it once was, the pattern of aggressive fossil-fueled development that led to its ascent endures. As we confront a planetary crisis precipitated by our extravagant consumption of carbon, it holds urgent lessons. This is a groundbreaking exploration of the complex relationship between energy, power, and the human labor that sustains both.

Weight: 596g
Dimension: 152 x 229 x 30 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780226826554