“We live the violence, we resist the violence:” violent politics between a school shooting and lithium mining in Serbia

Abstract This article explores the unexpected connections that emerge between lithium mining plans in Serbia and two mass shootings on the 3rd and 4th of May 2023. The 3rd of May event was the first school shooting in the history of the wider region, becoming for many Serbians a manifestation of systemic issues rather than an isolated event, and resulting in the formation of a massive protest movement. The Jadar Project was set to become the biggest lithium mine in Europe, yet it has attracted widespread resistance across the country, resulting in its cancellation in January 2022, which was, however, nullified two and a half years later. Drawing on ethnographic and activist engagement with communities affected by lithium exploration in Serbia, this article explores how the two protest movements intersected around the question of violence. I theorise ‘violent politics' as encompassing multiple and shifting forms of violence that arise between lithium extractivism and the shootings and beyond, arguing for the need to conceptually connect various forms of violence. Moving beyond understanding violence through isolated events then problematises the binary thinking between chronic and acute violence, or material and immaterial toxicity, instead revealing it as fluid and porous—yet still being resisted.