Gaoziyan Cui

This project examines the making of sovereignty in modern China through the material and metaphysical life of one metal. It argues that sovereignty emerged not merely from the state’s monopoly of violence or resource control, but from its capacity to translate lifeworlds—of lineage, labor, and ecology— into juridical and monetary legibility. Drawing on multisite archival and spatial research across Jiangxi, Hunan, Nanjing, Taipei, London, and New York, it traces how Hakka lineages, migrant miners, and revolutionary cadres transformed extraction into a site of governance and refusal. “Tungsten Sovereignties” rethinks the foundations of sovereignty, property, and personhood at the intersection of science, political economy, and law.