Spirits of Extraction - (Racism, Resistance and Social Change) by Claire Blencowe (Hardcover)

About the Book

An exploration of the historical intersections of the mining industry, Methodist evangelical Christianity, civilisational education, and the modern metaphysics of race. Contributing to theories of race and racism by insisting on the enduring role of religious biopolitics and Christianising education, whilst expanding on the 'geology of race'.

Book Synopsis

Spirits of extraction revisits the troubling history of socially reformist, ostensibly anti-racist, Christianity and its role in the expansion of the extractive industries, British imperialism, and settler colonialism. The book explores key moments in the history of Methodism and the evangelical movement. Colonial fears, and the attempt to 'civilise savages', were crucial to the movement's foundation in eighteenth-century industrialising Bristol, England. Through the culture of the Cornish mining diaspora of the nineteenth century, Methodism enmeshed with all the complexity of race and labour-structures of the British empire. At the same time, in Anishinaabewaki/Upper Canda/Ontario, Methodist missionaries laid the foundation of abusive education and racialised ideas of redemption that both enable and sacralise the mining industry. Through these histories of our present, the book theorises the relation of religion and education to racism, modernity, biopower, extractivism, and the geology of race.

From the Back Cover

Spirits of extraction reexamines the entangled histories of racism, Christianity, and humanitarian biopolitics in the long nineteenth century, offering a fresh perspective on the intersection of extractive industries, evangelical revivalism, and the violent civilisational metaphysics of race. Moving across eighteenth-century industrialising Bristol, the Cornish mining diaspora of the expanding British Empire, and the contested lands of Anishinaabewaki/Upper Canada/Ontario, this book traces how evangelical Christianity helped shape the colonial world through processes of extraction - of resources, bodies, and souls.

Blending historical narrative with critical theory, the book makes two key interventions. Firstly, it repositions colonial religion and educational/cultural racism as central to the biopolitical project, analysing the wounding effects of 'truly Christian' education and exorcism in evangelical subject formation. Secondly, it extends thinking on the 'geology of race' by highlighting the extractive industries as the affective scene through which modern evangelical Christianity came to life. By showing how mining and missionary practices co-constituted racial hierarchies and modes of sovereignty, Spirits of extraction offers a major contribution to thinking about the politics of life and resource extraction. Evangelical experiences of salvation, exorcism, and the transformative power of faith, the book argues, resonate through geological consciousness and the logics of extraction, sustaining a quasi-divine force that continues to structure lives and landscapes today.

About the Author

Claire Blencowe is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick