Aluminum Dreams by Mimi Sheller

Aluminum Dreams by Mimi Sheller

How aluminum enabled a high-speed, gravity-defying American modernity even as other parts of the world paid the price in environmental damage and political turmoil.Aluminum shaped the twentieth century. It enabled high-speed travel and gravity-defying flight. It was the material of a streamlined aesthetic that came to represent modernity. And it became an essential ingredient in industrial and domestic products that ranged from airplanes and cars to designer chairs and artificial Christmas trees. It entered modern homes as packaging, foil, pots and pans and even infiltrated our bodies through food, medicine, and cosmetics. In Aluminum Dreams, Mimi Sheller describes how the materiality and meaning of aluminum transformed modern life and continues to shape the world today. Aluminum, Sheller tells us, changed mobility and mobilized modern life. It enabled air power, the space age and moon landings. Yet, as Sheller makes clear, aluminum was important not only in twentieth-century technology, innovation, architecture, and design but also in underpinning global military power, uneven development, and crucial environmental and health concerns. Sheller describes aluminum's shiny utopia but also its dark side. The unintended consequences of aluminum's widespread use include struggles for sovereignty and resource control in Africa, India, and the Caribbean; the unleashing of multinational corporations; and the pollution of the earth through mining and smelting (and the battle to save it). Using a single material as an entry point to understanding a global history of modernization and its implications for the future, Aluminum Dreams forces us to ask: How do we assemble the material culture of modernity and what are its environmental consequences? Aluminum Dreams includes a generous selection of striking images of iconic aluminum designs, many in color, drawn from advertisements by Alcoa, Bohn, Kaiser, and other major corporations, pamphlets, films, and exhibitions.

Mimi Sheller is Professor of Sociology at Drexel University and the author of several books, including Citizenship from Below: Erotic Agency and Caribbean Freedom, also published by Duke University Press, and Mobility Justice: The Politics of Movement in an Age of Extremes.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780262026826
ISBN 10	0262026821
Title	Aluminum Dreams
Author	Mimi Sheller
Series	The Mit Press
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	MIT Press Ltd
Year published	2014-02-14
Number of pages	384
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.