Hinterland, Underground

This chapter adds a vertical dimension to the horizontal relations at work in hinterlands. From a metropolitan perspective, hinterlands are “back there,” “over yonder”: beyond the horizon. As Raymond Williams observed, such distinctions are complicated by the uneven economic and ecological metabolisms between country and city. But how are these metabolisms constituted by the subsoil: dynamic subterranean flows and stocks of matter and energy whose effects shape what might seem like stable ground? How are fossil fuel deposits lying beneath rural landscapes incorporated into geographic imaginaries of settler-colonial frontiers and agricultural heartlands? How does soil itself yoke surface to subsurface, hinterland to national and planetary politics? What social and political forces are at work in the hinterland underground?