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The nature of post-neoliberalism: Building bio-socialism in the Ecuadorian Amazon
Abstract
This paper explores the ideology and materiality of ‘bio-socialism’, through which the Ecuadorian government is attempting to catalyse a ‘post-neoliberal’ transition from the ‘finite resources’ of Amazonian oil reserves to the ‘infinite resources’ of biodiversity and scientific knowledge. This experiment is embodied in Ikiam, a public university under construction in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Drawing on extensive field research, we argue that, despite its radical intentions, bio-socialism is functioning as a strategy for the real subsumption of nature to capital, which is being operationalized in Ikiam in ways that reproduce the neoliberal knowledge economy. However, the contradictions of this process imply that, in practice, Ikiam is only intensifying established patterns of the formal subsumption of nature, by commodifying the genetic wealth and indigenous knowledge of the Amazon, and legitimating the expansion of the oil and mineral frontiers. The case of bio-socialism demonstrates the paradoxical nature of actually-existing post-neoliberalism, and illustrates the tendency for utopian ideologies to reproduce the material conditions they are seeking to escape.
... In addition, there was considerable expansion of state spending that was directed towards infrastructural expansion that saw the construction and expansion of schools, hospitals, roads and bridges (Pellegrini & Arsel, 2018). While there was considerable mismanagement of these budgets and various instances of white elephants (Wilson & Bayón, 2017), these projects left an impressive legacy across the country. Unsurprisingly, Correa's electoral popularity remained quite strong as long as these projects were implemented. ...
... That way, multiple goals would be accomplished simultaneously: the Amazon and rest of the ecosystems of Ecuador would no longer need to be destroyed to achieve economic growth; rather, their conservation and further development would be a precondition for growth; indigenous communities would no longer be marginalized economically and culturally but instead play a major role in national socio-economic development; and finally, Ecuador's relationship to global capitalism would change from being a primary commodities exporter to a twenty-first-century knowledge economy. In short, the overall approach to development can be described not simply as neo-structuralism (Wilson & Bayón, 2017), but given the promised transformation of how nature would be valorised as natural resources, more accurately as ecological neo-structuralism. ...
With the election of President Rafael Correa in the 2006 elections, Ecuadorian environmentalists became influential policymaking actors. Agenda‐setting successes were followed by their decisive contribution to determining legislative content and its passing. However, the moment of alliance between environmentalists and Correa proved to be temporary. Environmentalists returned to a more adversarial posture in relation to the state and its approach to constructing a post‐neoliberal development model that relied on the intensification of primary commodity extraction. Their efficacy in shaping environmental policy making and implementation declined and their activities against oil and mining extraction were met by increasingly authoritarian responses by the state. Structural constraints emerging from the global political economy of environment and development were ultimately decisive in the rise of authoritarianism and the reversal of the agenda of the environmentalists.
... Con la creación de la Universidad Regional Amazónica IKIAM como su principal emblema, ha sido un sector que se pretendía motor del cambio de la matriz productiva, y que ha atraído multitud de políticas públicas, aunque hasta ahora su desarrollo ha sido poco palpable. La universidad fue creada para generar una transformación de la riqueza biotecnológica y el desarrollo de bioconocimiento para su aplicación industrial ( Wilson & Bayón, 2017a). ...
... Se trata de una inversión a largo plazo, que aunque con resultados hasta ahora inciertos ya ha generado un espectacular proceso de especulación inmobiliaria sin precedentes en la Amazonía. El tramo de pocos kilómetros que une la universidad con la capital provincial Tena se ha llenado de nuevas residencias para estudiantes y chalets para el profesorado ( Wilson & Bayón, 2017a). La construcción del aeropuerto de Jumandy, pese a formar parte del megaproyecto Manta-Manaos también se vinculó a la existencia de IKIAM para atraer al profesorado internacional ( Wilson & Bayón, 2017c). ...
El Colectivo de Geografía Crítica del Ecuador recupera la mejor tradición del pensamiento crítico revolucionario que, sabemos, surgió en las calles, en las luchas sociales y no en la academia. Lo que no impide, al contrario, exige rigor analítico incluso porque los grupos sociales en situación de subalternización necesitan antes de todo deconstruir la visión que se tiene sobre ellos, que no es la visión que tienen de sí mismos, del mundo y de la sociedad que los rodea. Partiendo de la epistemología como una especie de superego crítico respecto a la coherencia del conocimiento producido, el Colectivo de Geografía Crítica del Ecuador se aventura en el campo teórico-conceptual y encuentra en el territorio una de sus principales fuentes de inspiración. Un libro que trae una contribución fundamental al pensamiento-acción crítico.
Link: https://abyayala.org/Abyayala2018/producto/geografia-critica-para-detener-el-despojo-de-los-territorios/
... Events in Latin America, Africa, Southeast Asia and beyond have also led to a rethinking of global connections and a renewed search for alternatives to neoliberal or 'hyper' globalization narratives of economic development (Behuria, 2018;Kozul-Wright and Fortunato, 2015;Salazar-Xirinachs et al., 2014). While it is now ebbing, the pink tide in Latin America hastened the search for progressive alternatives to neoliberal policy advice, as has the rise of various development-oriented political leaders in Africa whom have embraced the idea of building 'democratic developmental states' (Edigheji, 2010;Hart, 2014;Wilson and Bay on, 2017). Meanwhile, developing economies in Southeast Asia from Vietnam to Myanmar have sought to emulate the development experiences of their predominantly Northeast Asian trading partners. ...
... Recent work in human geography and beyond has foregrounded the anxious and ambivalent emotions that accompany development, planning, and diplomatic interventions (McConnell, 2017;Silvey, 2009;Westin, 2016), including the East Asian developmental state (Sioh, 2010a), the 'neurotic neoliberalism' of Jeffrey Sach's Millennium Villages Project and the 'biosocialism' of Rafael Correa (Wilson and Bay on, 2017). For instance, Wilson (2014) argues that 'neoliberalism should be interpreted as an anxiety-ridden form of crisis management that is constantly attempting to cover over the gaps and ruptures in its own ideological fabric caused by the contradictions that it is structured to conceal'. ...
This article examines recent knowledge sharing initiatives aimed at promoting South Korea’s development experience as a ‘development alternative’ and questions the coherence of the narratives being shared. Drawing upon an idea first put forward by Anna, I discuss how South Korea’s development cooperation initiatives occupy a zone of awkward engagement in which multiple meanings of its experience have proliferated and explore the anxieties that this engagement creates for practitioners. In particular, the article finds that practitioner anxiety is informed by a triple set of pressures for Korea to export an alternative development model, extend the overseas activities of domestic businesses, and entertain the ambitions of ruling political blocs. By focusing on questions of anxious engagement and the seemingly strategic ambiguity of knowledge sharing efforts it produces, the article highlights some of the limits and possibilities that shape the promotion of the Korean developmental state as an alternative development model for South–South cooperation and extends the emotional register of literature on emerging donors by questioning discursive claims that privilege empathy and reciprocity as drivers of development cooperation.
... Con la creación de la Universidad Regional Amazónica IKIAM como su principal emblema, ha sido un sector que se pretendía motor del cambio de la matriz productiva, y que ha atraído multitud de políticas públicas, aunque hasta ahora su desarrollo ha sido poco palpable. La universidad fue creada para generar una transformación de la riqueza biotecnológica y el desarrollo de bioconocimiento para su aplicación industrial ( Wilson & Bayón, 2017a). ...
... Se trata de una inversión a largo plazo, que aunque con resultados hasta ahora inciertos ya ha generado un espectacular proceso de especulación inmobiliaria sin precedentes en la Amazonía. El tramo de pocos kilómetros que une la universidad con la capital provincial Tena se ha llenado de nuevas residencias para estudiantes y chalets para el profesorado ( Wilson & Bayón, 2017a). La construcción del aeropuerto de Jumandy, pese a formar parte del megaproyecto Manta-Manaos también se vinculó a la existencia de IKIAM para atraer al profesorado internacional ( Wilson & Bayón, 2017c). ...
Los últimos diez años han provocado una fuerte transformación territorial de la Amazonía, donde sus ciudades petroleras han explosionado territorial-mente durante el boom petrolero. Por otro lado, la apertura de la megaminería también muestra tendencias de urbanización fuertes en el sur de la región. Este proceso de urbanización también debe ser mirado desde los procesos de explo-sión de infraestructuras que han llegado a través de megaproyectos, infraestruc-turas e inversiones del Estado. A través de estas transformaciones territoriales, se ha dado un proceso múltiple de urbanización en el que se han afianzado las ciudades proveedoras de servicios a la forma mayoritaria de acumulación de capital, se han generado nuevos enclaves de dinamismo económico, y se han llevado a cabo procesos de reasentamientos de poblaciones, que pese a no haberse consolidado aún, muestran las tendencias actuales. Este artículo trata de poner una mirada regional al proceso urbanizador de la Amazonía mediante las herramientas de la geografía crítica.
... Postneoliberalism exists as a philosophical theory. As "an utopian ideology" (Wilson & Bayón, 2017), it calls for a true break from neoliberalism. Escobar (2010) put forward the term "post-liberalism" to characterize this visionary plan. ...
... The question of how this ideological formation became rooted in material realities prompts us to qualify the postneoliberal record as a failure to escape the neoliberal paradigm (Grugel & Riggirozzi, 2012;Gudynas, 2012;Kennemore & Weeks, 2011;Macdonald & Ruckert, 2009). By investigating "actually existing postneoliberalism" (Yates & Bakker, 2014, p. 2), we observe how these postneoliberal practices reconstitute-or not-inequalities through a new arrangement of space and power (Elwood, Bond, Novo, & Radcliffe, 2017;Kaup, 2014;Wilson & Bayón, 2017) beyond the mere recognition of the fundamental resilience of neoliberalism. ...
Based on a study of the forest sector in the northern Amazon region of Bolivia, this paper addresses the reasons why the Bolivian so-called "postneoliberal" project is an adjustment of neoliberalism rather than a departure from it. First, Bolivia has aimed not so much at breaking away radically from neoliberal frameworks as at reasserting the importance of the state and of the national scale in regulatory actions. Second, the neoliberal period has left behind the insuperable legacy of a neoliberal approach to nature: by allowing local stakeholders to access forest resources, it has reinforced a commercial relationship with the non-human world. Third, it is not easy to reverse the internationalization of forest governance. All in all, the Bolivian state's reterritorialization of the country's margins through the control of forest resources has perpetuated processes that were initiated during the hybrid neoliberal period (1993-2005), though the focus has shifted from commoditizing the forest for the benefit of local stakeholders to facilitating the redistribution of this resource on a national scale. Since 2006 Evo Morales's forest governance has tried to integrate this multiscale dimension to create a pragmatic management model that combines agrarian colonization, conservation and extractivism. This explains both the apparent contradictions of the new Bolivian forest policy and the difficulties in creating a radically new form of governance. The case of Bolivian forests shows the extent to which neoliberalism has shaped spaces and scales in a way that guarantees its own resilience.
... If IBE has received pedagogical attention in the Amazonian school context, in higher education it has been largely lacking, with the exception of a recent study on the experience of interculturality at the UEA (Arias-Gutiérrez and Minoia 2023), and a previous article by Wilson and Bayón (2017) which views the establishment of the Ikiam University based in Tena (Napo province) as an instrument of the neoliberal economy of knowledge, commodifying the genetic wealth and the Indigenous knowledge of the Amazon, thus legitimizing the expansion of oil and mining frontiers. ...
The chapter introduces the main themes of the book and the theoretical framework, influenced by a decolonial orientation that seeks to support arguments in favour of the recovery of indigenous languages and knowledge, which centuries of white and Eurocentric political and cultural hegemony have led to erasure. If Ecuador is a country where a plurality of populations coexists, these must have equal citizenship, which is also achieved through policies of epistemic justice, starting with the recognition of their cultures and knowledge. The cultural aspect of political rights is normatively recognized by the Constitution and by reforms in public education; to this end, Ecuador, like other countries, has implemented an intercultural education policy. However, this term is widely used with various interpretations, from mere functionalist to radical ones. Therefore, the chapter analyses the relationship between different types of interculturality and the epistemic and political rights of the Indigenous populations and nationalities recognized by the state.
... The case of Esmeraldas illustrates the multiple and complex ways in which perverse and failed mechanisms keep working and strongly frame risk and environmental management. Here, urban governance is constrained by a neoliberal-inspired management of compensations that relies on (and supports) a longstanding process of marginalisation, and, more recently, of commodification (for the case of Amazon region: Wilson and Bayón, 2017). ...
The radical school identifies development as a core strategy for enduring disaster risk reduction. Simultaneously, development policies pursued by neoextractivism States often result in social and territorial dynamics that recompose risk situations without necessarily reducing them. They sometimes even intensify them. The city of Esmeraldas perfectly illustrates the detrimental effects when it comes to the risks of a voluntarist State policy based on oil revenue. Esmeraldas hosts infrastructures that are strategic for the country, for oil processing and export from the Oriente oil fields. The periods of government under Correa’s presidency (2007–2017) saw a momentum of compensatory investments (linked to the exploitation of primary resources) and pro-development (with respect to marginal territories catching up), which particularly concerned Esmeraldas. Analysis shows that the considerable sums invested in the city for these reasons resulted in the urban territory evolving without a shared vision. Ultimately, risk situations were recomposed (in certain cases intensified); the colossal economic resources that were mobilised did not give rise to progress commensurate with investments (the development objective remained intact); ways of managing territories and also development and compensatory funds remained structurally asymmetrical, cultivating subordination that constituted one of the long-term props shoring up risks in Esmeraldas.
... The city of Tena grew after becoming seat of the vicariate during the twentieth century and later provincial capital, with a Kichwa indigenous territoriality that has co-constituted numerous neighborhoods of the city (Tanguila Andy, 2018). There have been two logics of urban expansion in the last lustra that have taken their logics to the communities: the establishing of IKIAM University north of the city, and the logic of tourist resorts along the banks of the Pano river to the west, which are operating as urban expanders (Uzendoski & Saavedra, 2010;Wilson & Bayón, 2017c). Despite these dynamics having generated significant land dispossessions, the communities have accentuated a strategy of adaptation to these impositions. ...
Este artículo propone un ejercicio de conceptualización para abrir caminos decoloniales en los debates de urbanización planetaria desde la Amazonía. El análisis de las disputas indígenas de este proceso muestra que los espacios urbanos son residuales desde una perspectiva infraestructural, así como en su plasmación, sentido y cotidianidad. A través del análisis de ocho espacios urbanos de la Amazonía ecuatoriana en los que hay visibles prácticas indígenas, se ha realizado una metodología mixta cualitativa-espacial durante 2021 y 2022 mediante el estudio histórico de la conformación del territorio, entrevistas a dirigencias y observación etnográfica. En los resultados de este estudio emergen cuatro categorías diferentes de disputa de los nuevos lugares de urbanización, que muestran nítidamente formas en las que es contenido el proceso de colonización, al mismo tiempo que son contestadas las lógicas coloniales en sus lugares centrales desde saberes propios, permitiendo contrarrestar las narrativas dominantes de la urbanización planetaria en las que el capital avanza de forma omnipotente sobre los territorios indígenas. Por ello, el análisis contenido en este artículo permite concluir que las disputas indígenas hacen que la urbanización sea residual en la Amazonía, permitiendo una revisión crítica decolonial de sus bases de teorización.
... D urante la última década, el panorama político y económico del Ecuador dio un giro radical con la llegada al poder del gobierno de Rafael Correa (2007, lo que, a su vez, al igual que en varios países de América Latina, llevó a hablar de un período post-neoliberal, del "retorno del Estado" en la planificación del desarrollo económico y su mayor capacidad para implementar políticas sociales (Cederlöf & Kingsbury, 2019;Erensü, 2018;Gautreau & Bruslé, 2019;Villalba-Eguiluz & Etxano, 2017;Wilson & Bayón, 2017). Para ello, el gobierno de Correa procuró introducir en sus políticas y programas un nuevo paradigma en su búsqueda por alternativas para alcanzar mejores estándares de vida para la sociedad. ...
Por varias décadas, los problemas por el acceso al aguan han generado levantamientos indígenas y campesinos reclamando por el derecho al agua. A partir de este problema, esta investigación analizó si las nuevas políticas en el Ecuador han garantizado la democratización del agua. Por ende, se revisaron los procesos que se llevaron a cabo para garantizar la democratización de los recursos hídricos en el Ecuador durante el gobierno del Rafael Correa. Para ello, a través de un estudio histórico-descriptivo se estudiaron las bases precedentes a la nueva Ley de recursos hídricos hasta su aprobación. Los resultados sugieren que la nueva Ley garantiza la democratización de los recursos hídricos. Se concluye que, a pesar de los procesos por la democratización del agua, la politización de los discursos de diferentes actores aún influye como un factor de deslegitimación de los éxitos alcanzados.
... But too often, the result has been to reproduce existing patterns of resource extraction (Hope, 2015;Wilson & Bayon, 2017). Ironies and entanglements abound. ...
Updating my earlier engagement with post-neoliberalism, this article looks at the “after” of neoliberalism as a “post” neoliberalism under construction. It is addressed to our “discursive confusion” in the belief that effective political understanding and action might still be possible.
... Además, se regulan los recursos genéticos del país, teniendo en cuenta que este patrimonio es considerado como un recurso estratégico por la Constitución del Ecuador, y define dos instituciones fundamentales al respecto: la primera, la bioseguridad, entendida como la regulación de los productos de biotecnología moderna, a fin de contribuir a la biodiversidad y garantizar los derechos a la salud humana y al ambiente; y, la segunda, el biocomercio, esto es la conservación de la biodiversidad, la sostenibilidad social, económica y ambiental, para generar una distribución justa de los beneficios que esta genere (Wilson & Bayón, 2017). ...
La legislación ecuatoriana en materia ambiental se mantuvo dispersa durante décadas, con esfuerzos aislados para codificarla. Con la expedición del Código Orgánico del Ambiente, el Ecuador cuenta con una norma especializada y actualizada a las disposiciones constitucionales que propende la garantía de un medio ambiente sano y la defensa de los derechos de la naturaleza
El artículo analiza la literatura nacional e internacional que se corresponde a la estructura del nuevo Código, y estudia de manera crítica cada uno de los capítulos que lo conforman. El trabajo evidencia los aciertos del legislador ecuatoriano al dotar de un instrumento actualizado al paradigma ecuatoriano de la búsqueda de un modelo de desarrollo del buen vivir o “sumak kawsay”, pero a la vez evidencia una estructura aún centralizada en la Autoridad Ambiental Nacional dependiente del Ejecutivo, así como la falta de desarrollo del concepto de los derechos de la naturaleza, con lo cual se demuestra que se perdió una oportunidad única ya que por mandato constitucional esta norma era la adecuada para dotarle de contenido.
El trabajo presenta su innovación al ser el primero que realiza un análisis legal sobre el Código Orgánico del Ambiente, así como por abrir diversas líneas de debate sobre su implementación, posibles reformas, y oportunidades para la conservación del medio ambiente en un país megadiverso como el Ecuador.
... In Quimsacocha and elsewhere in Ecuador, Millennium Communities and Schools operate as Trojan Horses that, along with other similar standardized gifts, reinforce community division to facilitate extractive projects (see, for example, van Teijlingen, 2016;Valladares and Boelens, 2017;Hidalgo-Bastidas and Boelens, 2019). Wilson and Bayon (2017) investigated several of these compensation infrastructures and showed how they are fantasies of modernity that fulfill important political-discursive functions before and during their construction to make people accept or even embrace extractivist projects in their territories. However, they found that many of them stopped functioning shortly after their inauguration, for example because of lack of qualified staff in Millennium Schools. ...
Getting public opinion to see 'mining' and 'Nature's Rights' as non-contradictory and even equivalent and harmonious, calls for far-reaching power strategies. Nature was entitled to rights by Ecuador's Constitution at about the same time that the Government began promoting mining as central to Ecuador's future. Building this equivalence to make 'mining mean nature', and materialize large-scale mining in the Quimsacocha páramo wetlands, the State and its institutions tested new tactics to manage territory, coined new imaginaries and subjectivities, and limited indigenous/rural political participation. In response, communities started to dispute these governmentality strategies through political practices that framed new meanings of territory and identity. They use formal political and legal arenas but, above all, their day-today practices. This article analyzes forms of power and counter-power in the Quimsacocha páramo mining conflict, through the four different, interrelated 'arts of government' (Foucault, 2008) and mutual strategies by promoters and detractors of extractive industry who, in apparent paradox, both appeal to Nature's Rights. We conclude that using Nature's Rights to promote mega-mining manifests the limitations of social and environmental rights recognition under neoliberal gov-ernance, and the tensions inherent in Nature's Rights themselves. However, anti-extraction struggles like Quimsacocha's critically make visible as well as challenge the development model and economic system that is implicit in the debate over Nature's Rights, inviting us to rethink the socio-natural order and foster more just, equitable alternatives.
... Increased popular discontent and academic and civil society criticism over the neoliberal regime have redefined extractive resource politics where both multinational corporations and states struggle to relegitimise extraction (Hope, 2016;Jacob & Pedersen, 2018;Perreault & Valdivia, 2010;Vela-Almeida, 2018;Wilson & Bayón, 2017). This has taken forms such as the promotion of good governance initiatives by governments and multilateral organisations such as the World Bank (Bice, 2014;Bice & Moffat, 2014;Elbra, 2017;Poncian and Kigodi, 2018). ...
Resource nationalism has become a fashionable approach to resource governance in many countries across the world. Motivated by the desire to make resource governance deliver to socioeconomic development, governments in resource-rich countries have exploited resource nationalism to achieve their populist socioeconomic goals. In 2017, the government of Tanzania instituted a strong resource nationalist governance regime. This paper examines Tanzania's re-adoption of resource nationalism to understand how the government was able to institutionalise the reforms. The paper draws on secondary scholarly sources and primary materials such as President Magufuli's speeches during his presidential campaigns in 2015 and afterwards during his government clampdown on Acacia. Like studies on neo-extractivism in Latin America have shown, President Magufuli used resource nationalism as a political strategy to both secure a stronghold in party and national politics and le-gitimise his economic policy. Faced with a strengthening opposition politics and competitive elections, President Magufuli exploited public dissatisfaction with a liberal resource governance approach and a popular appeal of socialist policies to reintroduce resource nationalism as a strategy not only to re-legitimise extractivism but also to delegitimise the opposition and multinational corporations.
Este artículo presenta los debates sobre la transformación urbana y territorial en la Pan-Amazonía, desde su complejidad ecológica y los desafíos en una región de casi 7.5 millones de km². El análisis se organiza en cuatro partes. La primera inicia con las definiciones de la Pan-Amazonía como un bioma diverso, interconectado por redes urbanas y ecosistemas que soportan tensiones históricas y contemporáneas, desde la expansión colonial hasta los actuales proyectos de infraestructura extractiva. La segunda analiza patrones de crecimiento urbano y sus impactos en ciudades de ocupación reciente, caracterizadas por el centralismo estatal y la dependencia de circuitos de economías globales. La tercera reflexiona sobre la urbanización extendida, ecología y desafíos de sostenibilidad, evaluando los modelos de desarrollo y ordenamiento territorial. Finalmente, se presentan estudios de caso sobre gobernanza local y diseño participativo en ciudades amazónicas, mostrando cómo la integración de conocimientos locales, y herramientas colaborativas puede fortalecer la planificación y protección ambiental. A través de esta visión integral, se invita a reconsiderar los modelos de urbanización adaptados a la Amazonía, promoviendo una urbanización que respete tanto la biodiversidad como las identidades culturales de la región.
We used the two-dimensional travel-time seismic
tomography method to investigate three different
geological settings in the Northern Amazon of Ecua-
dor. This region includes the transition between the
Eastern Andes Cordillera and the Oriente Basin. This
transition is not continuous and is interrupted by
the Eastern Sub-Andean Belt. We carried out seismic
studies in the foothills of the Eastern Cordillera, in a
fault zone in the Colonso-Chalupas Reserve, and on
the banks of the Tena River. In the Oriente Basin, we
made the third line on the banks of the Napo River. The
inverse tomography problem was regularized using
the L-curve by three types of norms: the Euclidean
norm, the taxi norm, and the infinite norm. The use
of these three different norms ensures better error
control and, therefore, a more precise determination
of the L-curve corner, which is the point that gives the
optimal result. The L-curve regularization is also a
method to ensure the correct resolution of the inverse
problem. We interpret the regularized model in each
case to define the different structural units and the
geomorphological variations. In the case of the fault in
the Colonso-Chalupas Reserve, we can infer the splay
of the Talag fault at a depth of 10 meters. On the banks
of the Tena River, there are no appreciable changes
in the tabular stratification up to 10 meters deep. On
the banks of the Napo River, we can see traces of river
erosion in the old channel at a depth of 10 meters.
Rather than a surprising and illogical move to leave oil in the ground for international compensation, Ecuador's Yasuní-ITT Initiative should be understood as an outcome of ongoing struggles of interests within the state at the time. In this landmark oil moratorium attempt, launched in 2007, the Ecuadorian government offered to forego extraction of its largest oil reservoir, projected to contain 20% of the country's oil reserves, if it received international compensation totalling half the expected revenues. If successful, the initiative could have constituted a post-extractivist economic model that would have favoured indigenous and environmental interests at the expense of oil interests. However, the initiative was cancelled in 2013, after only a fraction of the requested sum had been received, and oil production is now ongoing. Most academic literature highlights how a developmentalist petro-state was willing to abstain from extracting its largest oil reserves, yet encountered a range of national and international obstacles. This article defies this ‘against all odds’ framing. It examines the initiative as a space-making process and understands the attempted internationalisation of the Yasuní oil as the state's spatial strategy to ensure continued income from oil, either in the form of compensation or by legitimising their continued existence as a petro-state and for business as usual if the attempt failed. This analysis demonstrates how understanding political economic resource governance and its space-making processes as outcomes of struggles and complex negotiation processes within the state could bring new insights into energy transition processes.
The analysis presented in this article departs from observing the differences in the spatiality of mobilising strategies regarding the most contentious and politicised oil projects in neighbouring Ecuador and Peru: Yasuní-ITT and Block 192. In the case of Ecuador’s Yasuní-ITT, mobilisation has been national, removed from the oil project’s spatial embeddedness and directed at oil extraction in itself. In the case of Peru’s Block 192, mobilisation has been local, linked to territory and directed at the terms and conditions of extraction. The deconstruction and reassessment of context emerged through an exploratory and process-based cross-border comparison. The article analyses secondary literature, a large sample of news items regarding the two oilfields, and research interviews with key actors in Ecuador and Peru. It argues that approaches from critical state theory can be applied to explain the spatiality of mobilising strategies. Historical state spatial strategies to ensure accumulation through extractivism, mobilisation over the consequences of such strategies, and the degree to which they continue to enjoy a hegemonic position, are found to be important dimensions shaping the spatiality of mobilisation.
El presente artículo explora cómo el tema de la biodiversidad puede ser utilizado como un discurso hegemónico que muchas veces no corresponde con la conservación de la naturaleza, sino que se encuentra regido por intereses de diferentes instituciones que ven en ésta nuevas formas para la apropiación y comercialización de recursos biológicos y genéticos. Partiendo de un enfoque posestructuralista se busca entender el papel del lenguaje de la biodiversidad en la capitalización de la naturaleza. Para ello, se aborda el caso de Ecuador respecto a la biopiratería y se concluye que a pesar de contar con una legislación ambiental y estar ésta enmarcada dentro de convenios internacionales acerca del acceso y distribución de los beneficios de la biodiversidad y los conocimientos ancestrales, los recursos genéticos terminan siendo hurtados por centros de investigación del Norte global.
Eighteen megadiversity countries are home to 70% of the species in the world. They also host more than 64% of the languages spoken on the planet. This paper builds on this strong correlation to argue that diversity of cultures is an expression of biological diversity. These two components of diversity must, therefore, be treated jointly by science, policy and practice to a much greater extent than is currently the case. We also present the risks and opportunities for the megadiversity countries from scientific, socioeconomic and political viewpoints.
In the ideological legacy of Friedrich Engels, the critique of ‘state socialism’ has a prominent, if overlooked, place. According to this conception, the essence of socialism is that the existing state intervenes in the capitalist economy and society with reforms to benefit the working class. The first section of this article outlines Engels’ critique of state socialism. It mentions how left geographers have approached his remarks on the trend, specifically in regard to the housing question, nationalisation and liberal democracy. The second part highlights the contemporary significance of Engels’ conception of proletarian emancipation – as contained in his critique of state socialism. Engels’ remarks can help clarify the objective conditions for socialism, conditions that some left geographers continue to ignore. It brings Engels insights to bear upon the Syriza Party in Greece, Corbynism in the UK, Bernie Sanders in the USA and the ‘Pink Tide’ in Latin America.
This commentary examines the challenge of sustainable development in the Amazon, arguing that global efforts to mitigate climate change and current Amazonian policies are clearly inadequate to prevent global warming and deforestation from tipping the forest into a savanna. It analyses the growing climate pressures jeopardising the Amazon's resilience; the erratic Brazilian, Bolivian, Colombian, Ecuadorian and Peruvian governance of the forest; and the failure of the Amazon Cooperation Treaty Organization (ACTO) to establish long-term forest conservation policies in the region. The research demonstrates that the ‘savannisation hypothesis’ is potentially closer to reality than most debates in the social sciences assume and should be considered seriously. The commentary concludes by suggesting possible pathways for preventing the dieback of the Amazon. These are based on three strategic axes: the strengthening of the ACTO, the promotion of a technological revolution in the forest, and a progressive environmental diplomacy by the Amazonian countries.
Geographical knowledge relies on area or regional studies and the production of disciplinary knowledge (Jazeel, 2015). Latin Americanist geographers around the world are mainly concerned with the first form of knowledge; however, given the politics of area studies (Powell et al., 2016), we acknowledge that the context and location of Latin Americanists affects the shape of knowledge produced about Latin America. Understanding the foregoing, this paper has two main aims. First, we approach the trajectories of geography (e.g. the evolution of their academic communities and disciplinary contributions) in two countries, Ecuador and Bolivia, over the past two decades.
This thesis explores the limitations and possibilities for the making of intellectual property laws for plants. The analysis is grounded in the contention that in recent years, a particular logic – understood here as a certain set of assumptions about the purpose of legal regimes – has come to dominate the way that lawmakers think about how to structure relationships between people, institutions, and plants. Thus, the dominant form of intellectual property for plants has materialised in systems that grant “plant breeders’ rights.” These regimes are predicated on a number of conventions, including that new plant varieties should be conceived as marketable technologies, that innovative activities undertaken by private actors to create plants with favourable traits should be incentivised, and that investment in breeding activity should be rewarded via exclusive commercial exploitation rights.
The plant breeders’ rights model has influenced the way that different social actors think about how different uses of plants should be regulated, and about the meaning and purpose of intellectual property. Nevertheless, many options remain accessible for governments to design innovative legal frameworks for the regulation of relationships between people, institutions, and plants. This is true even where certain international legal instruments have to some extent limited the formal legal space available for domestic experimentation.
Using a case study format focused on recent lawmaking projects in Ecuador, this thesis recounts how rationalities alternative to the conventional plant breeders’ rights model have manifested in new legislative and regulatory frameworks in that country. The methodology employed centres on doctrinal analysis of Ecuadorian and international legal regimes, and a socio-legal approach involving ethnographic fieldwork in Ecuador that occurred over the course of approximately seven months, in 2016 and 2018. The conclusion extrapolates several lessons from the Ecuadorian experience, which could be used to inform future initiatives for the making of novel intellectual property laws for plants in other countries.
There is now growing support for the United Nations to explicitly recognise the human right to a healthy environment, and to strengthen the fight for environmental justice. One key consideration is to explore how accessible environmental justice is for citizens in low- and middle-income countries, who are adversely affected by pollution problems. This article will evaluate citizen access to environmental justice through the state via a case-study of Peru. To do so, the article utilises the political ecology of voice (PEV) theoretical framework. PEV can be defined as the study of several economic, political, social, and geographical factors over a specific temporal period, and their impact upon the use of voice by different stakeholders. The research was centred on two communities affected by oil pollution events within Peru’s Loreto Region. It will show that Loreto’s rural population are subjected to “shadow environmental citizenship,” in which they have only peripheral access to environmental justice through the state, which also does not adequately recognise or support their right to seek redress. This in turn, forces people to seek access and recognition of environmental justice through more unorthodox or radical forms of action, or via the support of non-state actors.
The discovery of new use-values in commodities by science and the creation of new needs in consumers by marketing is a capitalist imperative. Drawing on archival work that examines the effects of the scientific discovery of vitamins on Newfoundland’s interwar cod liver oil industry, this paper locates these processes as a moment in an expanded conception of the real subsumption of nature under capital. I identify intensive and extensive logics of circulation that map onto the division between absolute and relative surplus-value, on the one hand, and the formal and real subsumption of nature, on the other. I conclude by arguing that understanding the full historical geography of real subsumption, by extending its scope beyond production and its periodization beyond the neoliberal era, is essential for reckoning and resisting the contemporary destruction of the world-ocean.
This paper offers a value-theoretic critique of ‘post-neoliberal’ energy production in Ecuador. The Ecuadorian government is attempting to end the dependence on finite hydrocarbon resources and unite energy infrastructure with industrial competitiveness through the transformation of the country’s ‘energy matrix’. Based on extensive field research, we argue that the project reveals the contradictions of the landlord state’s attempt to mobilise circuits of ground rent and foreign debt to create cheap energy as a comparative advantage for national industrial development. Riding high on global commodity prices and tapping into a huge stream of Chinese investment, the government massively increased investment in new sources of hydroelectricity and energy infrastructure. Whilst ostensibly bringing about a reduction in energy production costs, this has come at the price of leveraging the country’s natural resources (oil and minerals) and, paradoxically, creating an oversupply of hydroelectricity. Drawing on a Marxist reading of the landlord state and tracing the flows of ground rent, capital and energy we reveal how, far from the claims of post-neoliberal modernity, the project is in fact deepening resource dependence by channelling hydroelectricity towards the nascent Ecuadorian mining frontier.
In April 2017, Ecuador halted the continental drift to the conservative right in Latin America by electing leftist Lenín Moreno to the Presidency. Attention has turned, therefore, to the legacy of outgoing President Rafael Correa’s decade in power. To that end, this paper examines one of Correa’s signature programmes, ‘Buen Vivir’ (Living Well), a strategic plan for development underscored by the indigenous Kichwa cosmology of ‘sumak kawsay’. Sumak kawsay is a notion that has been co-opted into policy mechanisms in an attempt to both challenge neoliberal modes of governance, and to disrupt the ontological bifurcation of nature and society. Given the emphasis placed on ecological sensibility in sumak kawsay and Buen Vivir, critics have been quick to highlight the contradictory relations between Ecuador’s mode of environmental governance and its extractivist agenda. Such critiques are as staid as they are well rehearsed. Acknowledging the precarious composition of sumak kawsay, the paper questions the extent to which the ethos of experimentalism in politics can be sustained, eliding stymied technocratic forms of the political. It turns, therefore, to Baruch Spinoza’s treatise on adequate and inadequate ideas. In so doing, the paper examines how one can critique an idea without perpetuating a moral economy in judgment. Consequently, the paper considers the way in which Spinoza’s thought can be charged to recuperate imperilled political ideas.
This paper explores the entanglement of ideology and materiality in the production of the spaces of 21st century socialism. “Millennium Cities” are currently being constructed for indigenous communities throughout the Ecuadorian Amazon, with revenues derived from petroleum extracted within their territories. As iconic spatial symbols of the “Citizens’ Revolution”, the Millennium Cities would appear to embody “the original accumulation of 21st century socialism”—a utopian state ideology promising the collective appropriation of natural resources without the dispossession of the peasantry. Drawing on extensive field research, we argue that they are better understood as a simulation of urban modernity that is symptomatic of the predominance of ground rent in South American capitalism, and which conceals the violent repression of an autonomous indigenous project of petroleum-based modernization. The original accumulation of 21st century socialism can therefore be interpreted as a “fantasy of origins”, which functions to reproduce the primitive accumulation of capital.
El nuevo pacto de convivencia planteado en Ecuador en el 2008 a través de su Constitución de la República propone un nuevo pacto político que el autor lo denomina "El socialismo del sumak kawsay o biosocialismo republicano". El artículo explica las innovaciones sociales de la Constitución del Ecuador (2008) en la construcción de la sociedad del sumak kawsay o buen vivir.
Informe de visita de campo en la zona del megaproyecto minero Mirador, parroquia Tundayme, cantón El Pangui, provincia de Zamora-Chinchipe, Ecuador.
The planetary urbanization of capital entails the collapse of all traditional morphological distinctions into a seething morass of implosion–explosion that recalls the creative–destructive fury of a black hole. As an invisible presence–absence only identifiable by its spatiotemporal effects, the black hole resembles both the Lacanian Real and Marx’s value-theoretical understanding of capital. Utopian fantasies of postmodern hyperspace and rational spatial order function to fill in the void of the Real of Capital, but are ultimately undermined by the chaotic forces that they conceal. At the event horizon of black hole capitalism, where the crushing agglomeration of capital threatens to obliterate all social life, the seemingly impossible construction of Real utopias becomes an urgent necessity. The dynamics of this process are illustrated by the case of the Manta–Manaus multimodal transport corridor, which reveals the possibilities, limitations and antagonisms of utopian urban projects under conditions of black hole capitalism.
This paper explores the relationship between ground rent, production and knowledge in Ecuador’s neo-structuralist, state-led project to transform the productive matrix. Based upon insights from the Marxian approach to the critique of political economy, we interrogate how neo-structuralism has conceptualised the relationship between ‘natural resource income’ and ‘knowledge-based’ economic development. The paper argues that a rent-theoretical perspective, which takes seriously the regional unfolding of uneven geographical development in Latin America, can highlight the limits of a national development plan conceived according to the logic of Schumpeterian efficiency. In doing so, the paper identifies the contradictory relationship between natural resource exports, state-led ‘knowledge’-based development and capital accumulation. On this basis the paper offers a historically and empirically informed critical analysis of selective import substitution industrialisation and vanguard science and technology strategies designed to transition Ecuador away from primary resource dependence.
Despite the favourable context of the last decade, the transition to postextractivist economies grounded on alternative dynamics of accumulation has proved difficult in Latin America. As the case of Ecuador shows, macroeconomic imbalances and the changing global economy are threatening the scant advances accomplished and reinforcing the extractivist logic. Drawing on the postdevelopmentalist critique, this article examines Ecuador's Yachay project to explore how a new political economy of the commons based on a transition to a knowledge economy could lead to a new pattern of economic accumulation. This model should be based on local knowledge and delinked from extractivist and financial economies, to reduce Ecuador's social inequalities.RÉSUMÉMalgré le contexte favorable de la dernière décennie, la transition vers des économies post-extractives fondées sur d’autres dynamiques d’accumulation s’est avérée difficile en Amérique latine. Comme le montre le cas de l’Équateur, les déséquilibres macroéconomiques et l’instabilité de l’économie mondiale menacent les maigres progrès accomplis et renforcent la logique extractiviste. S’appuyant sur la critique post-développementaliste, cet article examine le projet de Yachay en Équateur pour comprendre comment une nouvelle économie politique des biens communs fondée sur une transition vers une économie du savoir pourrait mener à un nouveau modèle d’accumulation économique. Pour réduire les inégalités sociales en Équateur, une telle approche devra s’appuyer sur le savoir local et se dissocier des économies extractive et financière.
In most Latin American countries, issues concerning water governance and control also reflect broader
conflicts over authority and legitimacy between the state and civil society. What lies behind the diverse
water policy reforms is not simply a question of governing water affairs but also a drive to control or
co-opt water user groups. This paper examines the efforts by the present Ecuadorian government to ‘control
water users’ through new forms of ‘governmentality’ (Foucault, 1991). We use the ‘cathedral and
bazaar’ metaphor (Lankford and Hepworth, 2010) to illustrate government rationale and practices in
water governance shifts in the last decades. We analyze how Rafael Correa’s government sets out to
reshape the relations between state, market and society. In its ‘Twenty-first Century Socialism’ project,
based on a proclaimed ‘Citizen Revolution’, actual policy reform does not reverse but rather transforms
the process of neoliberalizing water governance – creating a hybrid bazaar-cathedral model. We argue
that the current water govermentality project implements reforms that do not challenge established
market-based water governance foundations. Rather it aims to contain and undermine communities’
autonomy and ‘unruly’ polycentric rule-making, which are the result of both historical and presentday
processes of change. Interestingly, water user federations that emerged during the neoliberal wave
of the last two decades now claim water control space and search for new forms of democratizing water
governance. They act as agents who fiercely – yet selectively and strategically – oppose both elements of
the State-centered (cathedral) and market-based (bazaar) water governance models.
Despite sustained critique of a neo-Malthusian focus on ‘overpopulation’, the issue continues to resurface regularly within international development discourse, particularly with respect to ‘sustainable’ development in relation to growing environmental security concerns. This suggests that the issue defies purely rational evaluation, operating on a deeper psychodynamic register. In this paper we therefore analyse the population question as a ‘scapegoat’, in the psychoanalytic sense of a fantasmatic construction concealing the gap between the symbolic order of international development and its persistent failure in practice. By conjuring the age-old image of animalistic barbarian hordes breeding inexorably and therefore overflowing their Third World confines to threaten the security – and enjoyment – of wealthier nations, the overpopulation bogeyman helps to displace attention from systemic issues within the political economy of development, namely, the futility of pursuing sustainable development within the context of a neoliberal capitalism that characteristically exacerbates both economic inequality and environmental degradation.
El artículo analiza las potencialidades y los límites de los nuevos «Estados compensadores» propios de los progresismos, y que son diferentes de la idea de Estado rentista o Estado de bienestar. Se complementa con la diferencia entre viejos y nuevos extractivismos y los crecientes conflictos socioambientales.
This article argues that South America’s ‘revolutionary’ left turn can be best explained by its assertion of state property over natural resource extraction. The recent history of the leftist movements in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador relates to the failures of the neoliberal reforms applied in the region decades before, hence the dismantling of core orthodox policies has been critical for them once in power. This has been possible through the expansion of state action in the economy, but mainly through the governance of hydrocarbon extraction and the control of subsoil rents. Resource extraction has been central to the political economy of Andean left-wing revolutionaries, responsible for many of their successes but also their impending challenges. This rearticulation of underground governance is linked to global transformations that give prominence to emerging economies and reinforces these countries’ position in the world economy as providers of primary commodities.
ABSTRACT The idea that states should take on an enhanced role in the pursuit of development is once again becoming increasingly pronounced in the global South. In Latin America, the ‘return of the state’ is associated with neostructuralism or post‐neoliberalism and the rise of the New Left. Post‐neoliberal projects of governance seek to retain elements of the previous export‐led growth model whilst introducing new mechanisms for social inclusion and welfare. In addition to being a project of growth based on exports and expanded social spending, post‐neoliberalism has a distinctive political character. This article explores the pillars of the new governance project, emphasizing the citizenship claims associated with it, along with some of the tensions that arise from export‐dependent growth, budget limitations, a weak tax base and the difficulties of managing enhanced social expectations. In making their argument, the authors draw on the examples of Bolivia, Ecuador and Argentina.
This paper addresses new challenges and identifies starting points for development theory following recent debates in Latin America on ‘new or neo-extractivism’. It focuses on the concept of neo-extractivism and the context of its emergence, and on the changing role of the state. Looking at a number of social economic indicators, we find that, even after considering differences between countries, (neo-)extractivism is not merely a temporary economic strategy in the region. Instead, it exhibits features of a consolidated development project. Empirical evidence from the region shows the fundamental implications of resource-based development paths in politics, social relations and territorial orders. To grasp these implications conceptually, we argue for a shift in theoretical perspectives related to the link between development and resource extraction. Key elements for such a shift are to be found in recent studies in rentier theory and politics and new approaches in the field of political ecology.
This authoritative book provides a deeply informed overview of one of the most dynamic social movements in Latin America. Focusing on contemporary Indigenous movements in Ecuador, leading scholar Marc Becker traces the growing influence of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE), which in 1990 led a powerful uprising that dramatically placed a struggle for Indigenous rights at the center of public consciousness. Activists began to refer to this uprising as a "pachakutik," a Kichwa word that means change, rebirth, and transformation, both in the sense of a return in time and the coming of a new era. Five years later, proponents launched a new political movement called Pachakutik to compete for elected office. In 2006, Ecuadorians elected Rafael Correa, who many saw as emblematic of the new Latin American left, to the presidency of the country. Even though CONAIE, Pachakutik, and Correa shared similar concerns for social justice, they soon came into conflict with each other.
Becker examines the competing strategies and philosophies that emerge when social movements and political parties embrace comparable visions but follow different paths to realize their objectives. In exploring the multiple and conflictive strategies that Indigenous movements have followed over the past twenty years, he definitively documents the recent history and charts the trajectory of one of the Americas' most powerful and best organized social movements.
This paper explores the possibilities and limitations of a post-neoliberal political project under conditions of planetary urbanization. We conceptualize planetary urbanization in terms of a tendency towards the real subsumption of space to capital on a global scale, through which capital is empowered as an abstract form of domination. We then relate this tendency to the ideology of ‘systemic competitiveness’ that has dominated the post-neoliberal project in Latin America, arguing that it threatens to strengthen the power of capital-as-subject. This relationship is illustrated by the Initiative for the Regional Infra-structural Integration of South America (IIRSA), and its incorporation into the post-neoliberal experiment currently underway in Ecuador. We focus on a series of IIRSA-related projects in the Ecuadorian Amazon, through which the real subsumption of space is disaggregated into three intertwined dimensions: territory, nature, and everyday life. In each case, we show how the ideological structure of post-neoliberalism unwittingly promotes the real subsumption of space and the empowerment of capital. However, the uneven dynamics of planetary urbanization imply that these projects are only succeeding in reproducing existing conditions of formal subsumption on an extended scale. The paper thus develops a materialist understanding of planetary urbanization in order to explain the failure of a political project to achieve its unintended results.
While the government of Evo Morales rules in the name of indigenous workers and peasants, in fact the country’s political economy has since 2006 witnessed the on-going subjugation of these classes. If the logic of large capital persists, it is legitimated in and through petty indigenous capitalists. This article argues that Antonio Gramsci’s conceptualisation of passive revolution offers a superior analytical point of departure for understanding contemporary Bolivian politics than does Álvaro García Linera’s more widely accepted theory of creative tensions. However, the dominant manner in which passive revolution has been employed in contemporary Latin American debates has treated the socio-political and the ideological as relatively autonomous from the process of capital accumulation. What is necessary, instead, is a sharper appreciation of the base/superstructure metaphor as expressing a dialectical unity of internal relations between ‘the economic’ and ‘the political’, thus avoiding one determinism or another. Through a reading of Gramsci that emphasises such unity, this article interrogates the dynamics of ‘extractive distribution’, class contradictions of the ‘plural economy’, and transformations in the urban labour market which have characterised Bolivia’s passive revolution under Evo Morales between 2006 and 2015.
This forum examines a range of grounded struggles over efforts to materialize elements of a ‘postneoliberal’ agenda by social and political movements of the 2000s. Drawing from their research in Latin America and South Africa, the contributors ask when, where and why these experiments in realizing postneoliberalisms have prompted durable transformations in neoliberal political economic structures and social rationalities (or not). Theorizing from diverse postneoliberalisms, they interrogate what these material and ideological projects reveal about space, power, contestation, and possibilities of reconstituting deeply unequal worlds.
In his final essay, the late Bolivar Echeverria considers the bicentennial history of Latin America's oligarchic states. While elites stage empty rituals of affirmation, might the continent's marginalized majorities be reimagining national identity?
This text forms part of my research on Latin American literature and culture in general, on the Amazon region in particular, and constitutes a tribute to an important Chilean Latin American Studies scholar, Ana Pizarro, who specializes in Amazon Studies. Awakening interest in the Amazon region in recent years has been a decisive factor in determining the direction of current Latin American studies. Ana Pizarro’s extensive study Amazonía: El río tiene voces. Imaginario y Modernización is evidence of this new orientation, as she analyzes different discourses constituting Amazonian identity. Published by the Fondo de Cultura Económica, in Chile in 2009, her book was awarded the Premio de Ensayo Ezequiel Martínez Estrada 2011 by the Casa de las Américas, Havana, Cuba. This article is divided into two parts: a brief introduction to contextualize the book, followed by an interview-conversation with the author, in which fundamental aspects of Amazon research are discussed in an international context.Este texto reproduce una larga entrevista-conversación con Ana Pizarro, escritora y académica de la Universidad de Chile, sobre su último libro, Amazonía: El río tiene voces. Imaginario y Modernización (Chile: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2009), realizada en Santiago de Chile en septiembre del 2011. El libro, que analiza los distintos discursos constitutivos de la identidad amazónica, obtuvo el “Premio de Ensayo Ezequiel Martínez Estrada 2011” otorgado por Casa de las Américas de Cuba, y está actualmente en proceso de traducción al portugués. La entrevista tiene dos partes: una breve introducción que informa sobre la autora y contextualiza el libro en el marco de los estudios latinoamericanistas, y la entrevista en sí que profundiza el sentido de dichos discursos e informa sobre el proceso de la investigación. La entrevista y la edición final del texto están a cargo de Margara Russotto, escritora y académica de la Universidad de Massachusetts/Amherst. La versión al inglés estuvo a cargo de Peter Kahn.
This article examines the contributions of psychoanalysis to international development, illustrating ways in which thinking and practice in this field are psychoanalytically structured. Drawing on the work of Lacan and Žižek, the article will emphasise three key points: (1) psychoanalysis can help uncover the unconscious of development – its gaps, dislocations, blind spots – thereby elucidating the latter’s contradictory and seemingly ‘irrational’ practices; (2) the important psychoanalytic notion of jouissance (enjoyment) can help explain why development discourse endures, that is, why it has such sustained appeal, and why we continue to invest in it despite its many problems; and (3) psychoanalysis can serve as an important tool for ideology critique, helping to expose the socioeconomic contradictions and antagonisms that development persistently disavows (eg inequality, domination, sweatshop labour). But while partial to Lacan and Žižek, the article will also reflect on the limits of psychoanalysis – the extent to which it is gendered and, given its Western origins, universalisable.
International development is increasingly financed and implemented by a nexus of billionaires and corporate foundations known as ‘philanthrocapitalism’. This article develops a critique of this paradigm, focusing on the case of the Millennium Villages Project (MVP), and its implementation in Bonsaaso, Ghana. The author interprets the MVP as a staging of the neoliberal fantasy of origins — an imagined history of the spontaneous emergence of capitalism in the frugal activities of smallholder farmers. In Bonsaaso, this fantasy has been shattered by the violence of primitive accumulation — the separation of the peasantry from the land through which capitalist social relations are actually established. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in Bonsaaso, the author describes how an influx of foreign gold miners has plunged the region into a profound socio-ecological crisis. Despite producing several internal reports on this crisis, the MVP has failed to respond to it, and has instead sought to restage its fantasy in a new Village in the north of the country. Yet an analysis of its background documents and financial networks demonstrates the complicity of the MVP in the political economy of primitive accumulation underway in Bonsaaso. The case provides a cautionary tale against the promise of a good and pure capitalism.
Social scientists have often focused upon how transnational corporations and elites mold socioeconomic organization and change in an era of neoliberal globalization. Often overlooked, however, are the active roles played by labor and nature in the construction of contemporary forms of capitalism. Examining the case of Bolivia, this paper explores how the laborers and natures in the country's two dominant economic sectors-hydrocarbons and minerals-shaped the country's neoliberal and counter-neoliberal shifts. I argue that, while both sectors were subjected to similar processes of neoliberalization, the materiality of the natural resources and the labor required to extract them have created divergent paths of counter-neoliberalization with different implications for the scope and reach of post-neoliberal possibilities. In theorizing neoliberal and counter-neoliberal shifts, scholars should thus seek to understand not only changing property rights, regulations, and institutional forms, but also the intimate relationships between commodities and their creators.
On August 5, 2011, Ecuadoran president Rafael Correa appointed long-time Indigenous leader Ricardo Ulcuango as ambassador to Bolivia. Typically the nomination of an Indigenous ambassador would have been greeted with applause and should have marked an important milestone in the expansion of Indigenous rights for this South American country. Instead, the designation triggered yet another round of ongoing acrimonious charges and counter-charges between Correa's supporters and his opponents on the left. Foreign minister Ricardo Patino claimed that the nomination was part of an irreversible process of social inclusion and the realization of a plurina- tional state that Correa's government and the progressive 2008 consti- tution had launched. Indigenous leaders, in contrast, denounced the nomination as a "war trophy" in Correa's battle with their movement that had been highly critical of his extractive policies on mining, land, and water usage. These activists discounted the government's version of plurinationalism as little more than a farce, and Ulcuango's nomina- tion as just one more attempt to divide Indigenous movements. Was Ulcuango's appointment a step toward implementing the ideals of a plurinational government that would incorporate all sectors of society? Or was it a token gesture, designed to divide and weaken the country's powerful social movements? Naming an impor- tant activist to a high-level post was one of the hardest blows that Correa could have dealt against his Indigenous opponents. In response, some activists labeled Ulcuango a traitor and called for his expulsion from the movement. But for so radical and deeply com- mitted a leader as Ulcuango to join the Correa government also indi- cated that he had a reasonable expectation of being able to use the position to advance movement demands. Rather than clearly repre- senting a step either forward or backward, what this nomination high- lights is the complexities, contradictions, and tradeoffs inherent in
In most Latin American countries, issues concerning water governance and control also reflect broader conflicts over authority and legitimacy between the state and civil society. What lies behind the diverse water policy reforms is not simply a question of governing water affairs but also a drive to control or co-opt water user groups. This paper examines the efforts by the present Ecuadorian government to 'control water users' through new forms of 'governmentality' (Foucault, 1991). We use the 'cathedral and bazaar' metaphor (Lankford and Hepworth, 2010) to illustrate government rationale and practices in water governance shifts in the last decades. We analyze how Rafael Correa's government sets out to reshape the relations between state, market and society. In its 'Twenty-first Century Socialism' project, based on a proclaimed 'Citizen Revolution', actual policy reform does not reverse but rather transforms the process of neoliberalizing water governance creating a hybrid bazaar-cathedral model. We argue that the current water govermentality project implements reforms that do not challenge established market-based water governance foundations. Rather it aims to contain and undermine communities' autonomy and 'unruly' polycentric rule-making, which are the result of both historical and present-day processes of change. Interestingly, water user federations that emerged during the neoliberal wave of the last two decades now claim water control space and search for new forms of democratizing water governance. They act as agents who fiercely yet selectively and strategically oppose both elements of the State-centered (cathedral) and market-based (bazaar) water governance models.
With all the talk of Latin America's turn to the left, few have noticed that there are really two lefts in the region. One has radical roots but is now open-minded and modern; the other is close-minded and stridently populist. Rather than fretting over the left's rise in general, the rest of the world should focus on fostering the former rather than the latter--because it is exactly what Latin America needs.
Infrastructures are material forms that allow for the possibility of exchange over space. They are the physical networks through which goods, ideas, waste, power, people, and finance are trafficked. In this article I trace the range of anthropological literature that seeks to theorize infrastructure by drawing on biopolitics, science and technology studies, and theories of technopolitics. I also examine other dimensions of infrastructures that release different meanings and structure politics in various ways: through the aesthetic and the sensorial, desire and promise.
State mandated corporate social responsibility (CSR) programs emerged in Ecuador in the 1990s, following indigenous protests rooted in social and environmental impacts of oil extraction. CSR programs aim to deflect blame for a company’s operations, by providing development or infrastructural improvements in indigenous communities, including micro-credit projects, potable water systems, and electricity. Through an institutional ethnography of CSR programs of the Spanish owned multinational oil company, Repsol, I explore how companies intervene in transformations of social life challenging the roles of the state in securing its territorial sovereignty linked to subterranean oil resources. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, and textual analysis of company and state documents, my analysis demonstrates how CSR programs allow companies to secure their presence in the region, even in the face of shifting regimes of governance. In this article, I provide more insight into Ecuador’s transition from neoliberal to post-neoliberal eras, by calling attention to social processes that seek to legitimize expansion of corporate capital in spaces of sovereignty. If state control over subterranean resources is still crucial to understanding forms of sovereignty, then the extension of that control via CSR programs represents new relationships of power that construct the company as an expert in the region. Exploring the everyday processes of these legal relationships of sovereignty through an institutional ethnography of CSR programs uncovers the programs’ impacts and effects that seek to consolidate power in the company, undermine indigenous rights, and discipline the state.
Ecuador is a prominent example of a Latin American country that has elected a left‐wing president who aims to create a post‐neoliberal development strategy. Many of the policies pursued by President Rafael Correa have focused on changing the relationship between nature and society. The new constitution of 2008, which grants rights to nature, adapts a new development model based on indigenous cosmology and strengthens the power and regulatory remit of the state over the economy and society, is an important statement of intent in this regard. The Yasuní‐ITT (Ishpingo‐Tambococha‐Tiputini) initiative to leave oil underground in exchange for international financial contributions is the most significant manifestation of this intent in actual policy. Analysis of two emblematic changes reveals that the creation of a post‐neoliberal development strategy has so far produced partial and uneven results. While nature and natural resources have come under stricter control by the state, this has not significantly diminished their commercialisation.
It is my aim in this article to engage with development and its promises at a time when many people are distancing themselves from the appalling reality of the development industry and the disastrous effects of its interventions. Rather than rejecting the notion of development, I contend that 'engaging with development' remains important in relating to Third World people's dreams and desires. In other words, people's desires for development must be taken seriously and its promises should not be forsaken. I elaborate on the political and ethical implications of the rejection of this notion of development and argue that, through the abandonment of the notion, the very 'object' of development is lost. In other words, the disavowal of development signifies the betrayal of its promise. To elaborate this position, I propose a Lacanian/Deleuzian perspective on development as a 'desiring machine' - which produces endless desires - so as to explore the radical, constitutive disjunction between the 'virtual' world of the development machine and the 'actual' workings of development interventions.
Two independent technical developments have transformed the metal mining industry in considerable ways: the increasing share of waste materials in the feedstock of metallurgical operations has partially transformed metal extraction into a recycling industry, and the employment of microorganisms in the extraction of metals from mineral ores has rendered metals mining a biologically based industry. Increasing industrial interest and research activity in the application of biotechnologies to the extraction of metals from waste, particularly electronic waste, intimate a potential intersection of those two processes, destabilizing further the analytical distinctions between extraction and manufacturing, biologically based and nonbiologically based production, waste and resources. This combined deterritorialization of metal extraction requires a theoretical deterritorialization: rethinking extraction beyond extractive industry narrowly defined and the role that nonhuman forms of life play in the production of value in nonbiologically based (extractive) industries. This article is a first step toward outlining the effects of such developments on understanding extraction. It begins by reflecting on the effects of recycling on the spatiality and materiality of the mine and then it proceeds to examine the productive role of microorganisms in mining, the limits of biomining, and the biotechnologies that have developed to transcend those limits. The conclusion draws out theoretical implications of those ongoing lines of deterritorialization and their combination on understanding the spatiotemporality of extraction and the active involvement of nonhuman nature in the production of value.
This paper draws on Slavoj Žižek's critique of ideology in seeking to account for the persistence and transformability of the neoliberal project. Against understandings of neoliberalism as a utopian representation projected onto an external reality, I argue that neoliberal ideology operates as a social fantasy, which structures reality itself against the traumatic Real of Capital. The evolution of the neoliberal project should be understood, not as the meticulous manipulation of social reality, but as a series of increasingly desperate attempts to hold the very fabric of reality together. Reconceptualizing neoliberalization as a form of obsessional neurosis can help to explain the relentless persistence of “zombie neoliberalism” and its paradoxical trajectory towards increasingly intensive forms of social engineering. This argument is developed through a critical engagement with the work of the economist Jeffrey Sachs. From shock therapy to the Millennium Villages Project, Sachs's trajectory embodies the characteristics of the neoliberal neurosis.
The paper aims to undermine the apparently monolithic power of neoliberalism, by challenging dominant critical representations of the neoliberal project in terms of a hyper-rational governmentality. It also aims to subvert the attempts by Jeffrey Sachs and other neoliberals to reposition themselves as opponents of the Washington Consensus, and as spokesmen of the Occupy movement. The chosen method of attack is more satirical than polemical. Neurotic neoliberals such as Sachs have successfully appropriated ethical objections to neoliberalism in the name of “globalization with a human face”. In the present conjuncture, an immanent critique that reveals the internal incoherence of neoliberal ideology, and the hapless floundering of its proponents, is perhaps more effective than a repetition of familiar forms of moral condemnation. An alternative subtitle for this paper might therefore be “Towards a satirical materialism”.
Resumen
En el Ecuador postneoliberal la ecopolítica esta flanqueada entre la extracción petrolífera y la minería, siendo el primer caso un ejemplo del fracaso de las políticas neoliberales, mientras el segundo es reflejo de las promesas populistas. Este artículo analiza cómo en Intag el activismo antiminería refleja este cambio en las políticas neoliberales desde un estado petrolero a un estado “nuevo y progresivo” que defiende una agenda prominería. En un sentido amplio, este artículo examina, por un lado, la forma en que la contraposición de estas divisiones ecopolíticas se movilizan en Ecuador con el propósito de producir un nuevo nacionalismo; y, por otro, cómo las subjetividades medioambientales existentes en distintos sectores se posicionan frente al estado. El análisis se centra en las representaciones y prácticas que dan forma a las subjetividades medioambientales de actores que, resistiendo la explotación de minas de cobre en sus tierras, operan simultáneamente a escala internacional, nacional y local y, por lo tanto, negocian múltiples –y en ocasiones contradictorios‐ significados respecto a los recursos naturales y su uso.