Indigenous Life Projects and Extractivism

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxv

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2. Introduction: Indigenous Peoples, Extractivism, and Turbulences in South America

   • Juan Javier Rivera Andía, Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard

   Pages 1-50Open Access

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3. Flows, Wealth, and Access

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 51-51

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   2. Controlling Abandoned Oil Installations: Ruination and Ownership in Northern Peruvian Amazonia

      • María A. Guzmán-Gallegos

      Pages 53-73Open Access

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   3. Extractive Pluralities: The Intersection of Oil Wealth and Informal Gold Mining in Venezuelan Amazonia

      • Amy Penfield

      Pages 75-93Open Access

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   4. In the Spirit of Oil: Unintended Flows and Leaky Lives in Northeastern Ecuador

      • Stine Krøijer

      Pages 95-118Open Access

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   5. Translating Wealth in a Globalised Extractivist Economy: Contrabandistas and Accumulation by Diversion

      • Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard

      Pages 119-140Open Access

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4. Extractivism, Land, Ownerships

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 141-141

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   2. Water as Resource and Being: Water Extractivism and Life Projects in Peru

      • Astrid B. Stensrud

      Pages 143-164Open Access

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   3. The Silent ‘Cosmopolitics’ of Artefacts: Spectral Extractivism, Ownership and ‘Obedient’ Things in Cañaris (Peru)

      • Juan Javier Rivera Andía

      Pages 165-193Open Access

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   4. Carbon and Biodiversity Conservation as Resource Extraction: Enacting REDD+ Across Cultures of Ownership in Amazonia

      • Marc Brightman

      Pages 195-216Open Access

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5. Indigeneity, Activism, and the Politics of Nature

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 217-217

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   2. Stories of Resistance: Translating Nature, Indigeneity, and Place in Mining Activism

      • Fabiana Li, Adriana Paola Paredes Peñafiel

      Pages 219-243Open Access

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   3. Performing Indigeneity in Bolivia: The Struggle Over the TIPNIS

      • Nicole Fabricant, Nancy Postero

      Pages 245-276Open Access

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6. Back Matter

   Pages 277-282

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Exploring indigenous life projects in encounters with extractivism, the present open access volume discusses how current turbulences actualise questions of indigeneity, difference and ontological dynamics in the Andes and Amazonia. While studies of extractivism in South America often focus on wider national and international politics, this contribution instead provides ethnographic explorations of indigenous politics, perspectives and worlds, revealing loss and suffering as well as creative strategies to mediate the extralocal. Seeking to avoid conceptual imperialism or the imposition of exogenous categories, the chapters are grounded in the respective authors’ long-standing field research. The authors examine the reactions (from resistance to accommodation), consequences (from anticipation to rubble) and materials (from fossil fuel to water) diversely related to extractivism in rural and urban settings. How can Amerindian strategies to preserve localised communities in extractivist contexts contribute to ways of thinking otherwise?

• Indigenous
• extractivism
• South America
• extractive industries
• poverty-reduction
• marginalization
• inequality
• environmental damage
• ecological devastation
• mining
• energy extractive
• indigenous world-making
• indigenous life-making
• politics of nature
• commodification
• privatization
• latin america
• ethnology
• indigeneities
• open access

“The volume … is one of the latest works within the growing body of literature on extractivism and indigeneity in the region. Clearly written and yet rich in always surprising ethnographic material, this volume is essential reading for scholars and students interested in both Amerindian anthropology and political ecology in general.” (Anthropological Quarterly, Vol. 93 (2), 2020)

“With the 2000s commodities boom, Americas’ Indigenous peoples faced the renewed threats of an old enemy: extractivism. For reasons that this book tries to understand, the forces resisting this boom, whether indigenous and non-indigenous, gathered around distinctive conceptualizations of the environment, opening a door to the expression of alternative ontologies and cosmopolitics. Through ethnographic studies both in Amazonia and the Andes, the book vividly discusses the conundrums of these times from the perspective of indigenous peoples. Indispensable reading.” (Carlos Fausto, Professor of Anthropology, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

“Clashes between extractivist designs and Indigenous life projects are as old as the European invasion.  But, under the shadow of the Anthropocene, these clashes both further erode the commonsensical notion that non-humans are simply resources, and reveal the plausibility of worlds constituted otherwise. This superb collection of ethnographies constitutes essential reading to grasp the practical, analytical and ultimately political consequences of life projects that presuppose worlds populated by human and non-human persons, rather than by humans and resources.” (Mario Blaser, Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in Aboriginal Studies, Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada)

• University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway

  Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard

• Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain

  Juan Javier Rivera Andía

Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard is Associate Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen, Norway.


Juan Javier Rivera Andía is Research Fellow at the Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona, Spain.

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