Indigenous Life Projects and Extractivism: Ethnographies from South America (Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference)

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? Front Matter ....Pages i-xxv Introduction: Indigenous Peoples, Extractivism, and Turbulences in South America (Juan Javier Rivera Andía, Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard)....Pages 1-50 Front Matter ....Pages 51-51 Controlling Abandoned Oil Installations: Ruination and Ownership in Northern Peruvian Amazonia (María A. Guzmán-Gallegos)....Pages 53-73 Extractive Pluralities: The Intersection of Oil Wealth and Informal Gold Mining in Venezuelan Amazonia (Amy Penfield)....Pages 75-93 In the Spirit of Oil: Unintended Flows and Leaky Lives in Northeastern Ecuador (Stine Krøijer)....Pages 95-118 Translating Wealth in a Globalised Extractivist Economy: Contrabandistas and Accumulation by Diversion (Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard)....Pages 119-140 Front Matter ....Pages 141-141 Water as Resource and Being: Water Extractivism and Life Projects in Peru (Astrid B. Stensrud)....Pages 143-164 The Silent ‘Cosmopolitics’ of Artefacts: Spectral Extractivism, Ownership and ‘Obedient’ Things in Cañaris (Peru) (Juan Javier Rivera Andía)....Pages 165-193 Carbon and Biodiversity Conservation as Resource Extraction: Enacting REDD+ Across Cultures of Ownership in Amazonia (Marc Brightman)....Pages 195-216 Front Matter ....Pages 217-217 Stories of Resistance: Translating Nature, Indigeneity, and Place in Mining Activism (Fabiana Li, Adriana Paola Paredes Peñafiel)....Pages 219-243 Performing Indigeneity in Bolivia: The Struggle Over the TIPNIS (Nicole Fabricant, Nancy Postero)....Pages 245-276 Back Matter ....Pages 277-282 Exploring indigenous life projects in ongoing encounters with extractivism in the Andes and Amazonia, the present open access volume provides ethnographic analyses of indigenous politics, perspectives and worlds. The authors discuss how current turbulences actualise questions of indigeneity, difference and ontological dynamics, examining the reactions (from resistance to mediation of the extralocal), consequences (from anticipation to rubble) and materials (from fossil fuel to water) diversely related to extractivism. How can Amerindian strategies to preserve localised communities in extractivist contexts contribute to ways of thinking otherwise?