It’s largely invisible to most of us, but without the industries and workers that drill or mine the world’s raw materials, and the arteries of transport that bring petroleum and other resources across the seas, global capitalism would sputter to a halt. Scholar and writer Laleh Khalili has traveled on the system’s massive container ships and describes in unflinching terms the inner workings of resource extraction.
Laleh Khalili, Extractive Capitalism: How Commodities and Cronyism Drive the Global Economy Verso, 2025
Photo credit: NOAA’s National Ocean Service