Browsing by Subject "Extractivism"
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Item Mining memory: contention and social memory in a Oaxacan territorial defense struggle(2014-05) Macias, Anthony William; Hale, Charles R., 1957-Faced with the profound social and ecological threats posed by extractivist projects such as large hydroelectric dams, wind farms, and mining operations, many indigenous communities and their allies in Mexico have articulated new forms of contentious politics into a broad territorial defense movement. This project explores the strategies of contention practiced by an anti-mining movement based in the Municipality of San José del Progreso in the southern state of Oaxaca. As a deeply-divided community that has suffered increased violence and conflict directly related to a Canadian-owned gold and silver mine operating in its vicinity, it presents a valuable case study in how strong social movements can still develop under conditions of disunity. This study combines ethnographic and archival research methods to uncover the deep historical roots of community division, and to develop a close analysis of the contentious strategies employed by the anti-mining movement. The historical record and local narratives show the central role that hacienda colonialism played in creating a salient geography of ethnic discrimination and division in the municipality whose effects can still be seen today. In response to the ongoing processes of colonization and dispossession in San José del Progreso, a legacy of contention has defined and defended both campesino (peasant farmer) and indigenous claims to local territory. More than a series of instrumental strategies designed to expel the hacienda and later mine project, this politics of contention operates as a form of social memory to produce a hybrid form of indigenous/campesino identity linked to healthy land stewardship, an interconnectedness between the earth and human subjects, and a shared history of struggle. As a result, the anti-mining movement in San José del Progreso has shown success in converting its troubled past and checkered present into the foundations of a healthy social and ecological commons, independent of its failure to fully-unite the municipality or close down the mine project in the short-run.Item Settler colonialism, knowledge articulation, and the politics of development in the TIPNIS indigenous territory and national park in Amazonian Bolivia(2015-12) Beveridge, James Michael; Speed, Shannon, 1964-; TallBear, KimberlyThis thesis examines how the dispute over the Bolivian government’s plan to construct a highway through the TIPNIS indigenous territory and national park in Amazonian Bolivia crystallizes the divergent visions and politics at play in realizing development projects in the TIPNIS. While progressive indigenous and environmental rights were inscribed in the 2009 Bolivian constitution, I argue that the government’s plan to impose the TIPNIS highway is a settler colonial project to dispossess the TIPNIS communities of their lands. This is facilitated by a national government—civilian colonist complicity that undermines the TIPNIS sovereignty and brings the TIPNIS territory under increasing governance and regulation under a post-frontier governance regime. I furthermore employ a framework I call knowledge articulation to examine the struggles of different actors to resist and/or implement varying development visions, which sometimes overlap and at other times compete with each other, in the TIPNIS. All of these projects demonstrate that the Bolivian decolonial path is fundamentally an amalgam: articulated knowledges, hybrid economies, and development outcomes that are resisted, contested, and negotiated configurations of various actors’ uneven authority, expertise and power.