Indonesian nickel sovereignty and global raced finance: the value of Element 28 in an age of ‘transition’

In the context of a global rush to electrify vehicle markets, for which nickel is recast as a ‘critical mineral’, Indonesia has sought to build sovereignty over its mineral resources and reinvigorated a value project which stretches back at least to independence and the Bandung era. Recalling Samir Amin’s analysis of the worldwide law of value, the income countries of the global South are able to derive from their resources is indelibly related to the structures of domination and financial subordination they are ultimately subject to. This article explores Indonesia’s efforts to maximize the rent extracted from its abundant nickel reserves in light of this resource income/subordination relation at the heart of global value structures, extending the analysis to consider resource extraction to be the actual material base of raced finance in the world system. Nickel, I argue here, might be the perfect national commodity, serving Indonesia’s long-time quest to break with the law of worldwide value and raced financial subordination by capturing downstream value-added processing and production. However, integral to this mineral sovereignty project is the sacrifice of socioecological life along Indonesia’s nickel frontiers where mining and processing inflict expropriation, contamination, and exploitation upon affected communities.