In the early 2010s, a spectacular fall in prices for a class of mineral commodities called the rare earth elements (REEs) and the collapse of hundreds of new exploration companies made clear the fragility of the high-risk markets around these companies and the strategies of legitimation that supported them. New regulatory processes built around technical disclosures generated vast stores of geotechnical data. Rather than generating trust among market actors, however, these processes dramatically altered the temporalities of global extraction and energized unruly narrative spaces. In their efforts to keep mineral claims active and companies afloat, REE-focused exploration experts have struggled to navigate different arenas of discussion while holding their respective logics in tension. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with exploration geologists and promoters, this article examines how experts federate flows of 'serious' and 'speculative' information in both carefully regulated reports and rumor-filled online forums. Such spaces are organized by aesthetic conventions and social criteria for establishing persuasiveness-forms that STS scholars have long analyzed as literary technologies. Rather than helping to secure experts' authority, however, I argue that the diverse literary technologies that now dominate exploration promotion and finance work have radically redistributed interpretive roles. In their struggles to mediate senses of 'crisis' endemic within venture markets, exploration experts must enact the ideals undergirding new regulatory requirements even as they learn to defer to the speculative musings of others.

中文翻译：

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相信数字：稀土元素勘探中的严肃数字和推测性虚构。


2010 年代初，一类被称为稀土元素 (REE) 的矿产商品价格大幅下跌，以及数百家新勘探公司的倒闭，清楚地表明了这些公司周围高风险市场的脆弱性，以及这些公司的战略。支持他们的合法性。围绕技术披露建立的新监管流程产生了大量岩土数据。然而，这些过程并没有在市场参与者之间产生信任，而是极大地改变了全球提取的时间性，并激发了不守规矩的叙事空间。为了保持矿产资源的活跃和公司的生存，专注于稀土元素的勘探专家一直在努力驾驭不同领域的讨论，同时保持各自的逻辑紧张。本文借鉴与勘探地质学家和推广者进行的民族志实地考察，探讨了专家们如何在严格监管的报告和充满谣言的在线论坛中联合“严肃”和“推测”信息流。这些空间是根据审美惯例和社会标准来组织的，以建立说服力形式，STS 学者长期以来将其分析为文学技术。然而，我认为现在主导探索推广和金融工作的多样化文学技术并没有帮助确保专家的权威，而是从根本上重新分配了解释角色。在努力调解风险市场中普遍存在的“危机”感的过程中，勘探专家必须制定支撑新监管要求的理想，即使他们学会了遵循其他人的投机想法。