Manuel Tironi’s research while affiliated with Pontifical Catholic University of Chile and other places

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Publications (52)


Prococaciones y tensiones del Antropoceno
  • Article

August 2023

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26 Reads

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3 Citations

Estudios Públicos

Manuel Tironi

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Beltrán Undurraga

La sección Simposio de la revista Estudios Públicos es un espacio de debate académico público en torno a ideas de alcance sustantivo. Se compone de un artículo original, sometido previamente a revisión de pares, que es críticamente analizado en contribuciones cortas por cuatro académicos desde distintos ángulos y disciplinas. El simposio cierra con una respuesta de los autores del ar-tículo original a los comentarios realizados. El Antropoceno, o la hipótesis según la cual la actividad humana se ha convertido en una fuerza capaz de alterar las dinámicas terrestres inaugurando una nueva era geológica, ha generado una serie de debates más allá de las ciencias de la Tierra. En el presente artículo revisamos tres discusiones que el concepto ha provocado en las ciencias sociales y las humanidades, y que ponen de manifiesto los equívocos que el Antropoceno trae consigo: la tensión entre simetría o irreductiblidad entre naturaleza y sociedad; la condición del agente humano al que se le imputan las transformaciones en curso, y el sentido y alcance ético-político de las acciones que comienzan a movilizarse para responder a la crisis. Sobre la base de los fértiles claroscuros y desacuerdos del Antropoceno, y atendiendo tanto a la crisis planetaria que enfrentamos como al inusual dinamismo geológico de nuestro territorio, especulamos sobre la necesidad de ‘geologizar’ la sociología chilena, incorporando elementos y fuerzas más-que-humanas en sus recuentos de la constitución de lo social. A modo de ejemplos, planteamos la importancia de crear analíticas y métodos para pensar la identidad cultural, la corporalidad y la política desde su composición e interdependencia geológica. Concluimos invitando a la sociología chilena a hacerse parte del problema y a dejarse interpelar por la pregunta con que el Antropoceno nos incomoda: qué haremos.



Figura 1. Esquema territorial de la Cuenca del Salar de Atacama Fuente: Sonia Ramos Chocobar. Diseño de Sergio Iacobelli.
Figura 4. Volcanes Hécar (Iticunza) y Laguna Verde (Iticuna) Fuente: Manuel Tironi.
Un Sol Interior: Vulcanología Lickanantay en el Salar de Atacama
  • Article
  • Full-text available

July 2023

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188 Reads

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2 Citations

Revista de Estudios Latinoamericanos sobre Reducción del Riesgo de Desastres REDER

Habiendo vivido junto al dinamismo geológico de la cuenca del Salar de Atacama (Chile) por milenios, el pueblo Lickanantay ha acumulado abundantes datos observacionales y ceremoniales acerca de la naturaleza volcánica que les rodea y la participación de volcanes en procesos más amplios de formación cosmoecológica. Sin embargo, la vulcanológica formal no ha establecido un diálogo sustantivo con estos conocimientos. A través de una colaboración intercultural, este artículo expone lo que llamamos ‘vulcanología Lickanantay’ —o el sistema Lickanantay de conocimiento sobre volcanes, relaciones volcanes-humanos e interdependencia geocósmica— con el objetivo de hacerla disponible para la comunidad vulcanológica general. Primero, describimos las características básicas de la vulcanología Lickanantay. Luego nos enfocamos en el campo geotérmico de El Tatio para ofrecer una aproximación situada. Finalmente, delineamos algunos elementos para la gestión del riesgo volcánico desde una perspectiva Lickanantay. En nuestras conclusiones sugerimos que la vulcanología Lickanantay invita a pensar lo ‘indígena’ no como un conjunto finito de conocimientos y prácticas sino como una demanda por autonomía territorial y epistemológica, y que es sólo reconociendo esa demanda que la vulcanología podrá responder al llamado de la descolonización de la ciencia.

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Lickanantay organization of the three worlds. Design: Sergio Iacobelli.
Ancestral Lickanantay volcanic territory according to Sonia Ramos. Design: Sergio Iacobelli.
El Tatio ancestral territory. Author: Manuel Tironi.
Hécar (Iticunza) and Laguna Verde (Iticuna) volcanoes. Author: Manuel Tironi.
An Inside Sun: Lickanantay Volcanology in the Salar de Atacama

July 2022

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181 Reads

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10 Citations

The need of establishing more substantive dialogs between the mainstream and Indigenous knowledge on volcanoes has been increasingly recognized. To contribute to this endeavor, in this article we present the basic volcanological understandings of the Lickanantay people in the Salar de Atacama Basin. The Salar de Atacama Basin is an active volcanic territory within the Central Volcanic Zone of the Andes (CVZA). From the El Tatio geothermal field to Socompa volcano, more than 19 active volcanoes surround the territory that the Lickanantay (Atacameño) people have inhabited for more than 11,000 years. Living around and with the geological dynamism of the CVZA for millennia, the Lickanantay communities have accumulated rich observational and ceremonial data on volcanoes and volcanism. Paradoxically, however, while the Atacameño people have thoroughly characterized the CVZA, the volcanology community has not been properly introduced to the ancestral knowledge articulated in the territory. In order to make traditional Atacameño perspectives on volcanoes, volcanic risk, and geo-cosmic interdependence more amply available to the volcanology community, in this article, we present a basic description of what we call Atacameño volcanology. By Atacameño volcanology, we understand the ancestral principles by which volcanoes are known and understood as partaking in larger processes of a cosmo-ecological formation. Specifically, we describe the basic volcanological notions arising from the Lickanantay ancestral knowledge—volcanic formation, functions, and behavior. Second, we focus on the El Tatio geothermal field to offer a situated example. Finally, we delineate some relevant elements of human–volcano interactions and volcanic risk management from an Atacameño perspective. In our conclusions we suggest that volcanology, particularly in the context of the Andes, needs to engage more substantially with the Atacameño or other ancestral systems of knowledge production to expand volcanological insights and respond to the call for decolonizing science.




Bude uncommon: extractivist endings and the unthinkable politics of conservation in Lafkenche territory

November 2021

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59 Reads

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1 Citation

Tapuya Latin American Science Technology and Society

Tubul-Raqui, in the Lafkenche territory of Arauco, southern Chile, is a wetland for conservation scientists and state officials, but a bude for Lafkenche people. Wetland and bude sometimes coincide, but they are also radically divergent. This paper, a collaboration between two scholars and a Lafkenche longko, is about the existential and political consequences of this disjuncture for Lafkenche life projects and struggles for self-determination. By chronicling two recent events in Tubul-Raqui – the implementation of a sustainable plan for wetland conservation and the 2010 tsunami – we argue that liberal conservation programs under the rubric of “sustainability,” or what we call convivial conservation, only reinforce Indigenous disspossesion and extenuates Lafkenche lives. We show, as well, that the decolonization of conservation entails accounting for the plural meanings, practices, and temporalities of extinction – since death in Tubul-Raqui was not brought by the tsunami but by the extreme latency of extractivism, or what we call extractivist endings. We conclude by reflecting on the political trap faced by Lafkenche communities in Tubul-Raqui – the impossibilty to save the bude without converting it into a wetland – and to what extent this situation demands for a mode of politics that inhabits at the intersection between the plausible and the unconceivable – or what we call an unthinkable politics.


Extractivist droughts: Indigenous hydrosocial endurance in Quillagua, Chile

November 2021

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142 Reads

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10 Citations

The Extractive Industries and Society

Extractivism is intensifying climate-induced water tensions in indigenous communities. As a response, climate sciences have acknowledged the capacity of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) for the design and application of ad-hoc adaptation techniques and interventions. However, the mainstream literature on indigenous water-related adaptation has often presented TEK in ways that neglect the knowledge flexibility and its political role in community perseverance and indigenous resurgence. To expand on this analysis, we examine the case of the Aymara community of Quillagua in northern Chile in the context of “extractivist droughts,” or water dispossession caused by the mining complex. Specifically, we describe how Quillagueños and Quillagueñas articulate multiple strategies to resist against, co-exist with, and flourish in the face of the entwined effect of extractivism and colonialism on water, or what we call indigenous hydrosocial endurance. Drawing upon an ethno-historical approach, we reconstruct the history of indigenous hydrosocial interventions articulated in Quillagua. Our results suggest that the Aymara community of Quillagua has resorted to four strategies to endure water dispossession over time: endurance by invention, reappropriation, ethnification, and tweaking. Each of these strategies responds to the specific and evolving hydro-political conditions produced by mining extraction that have affected indigenous livelihoods in the Atacama Desert since the 19th century. We conclude the article by arguing that adaptation literature and policy should acknowledge the embodied condition of indigenous knowledges; otherwise, it may be disempowering indigenous struggles against settler-colonialism.


Interruptions: imagining an analytical otherwise for disaster studies in Latin America

October 2021

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110 Reads

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8 Citations

Disaster Prevention and Management An International Journal

Manuel Tironi

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[...]

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Purpose Based on the research, the authors identify how four key concepts in disaster studies—agency, local scale, memory and vulnerability—are interrupted, and how these interruptions offer new perspectives for doing disaster research from and for the South. Design/methodology/approach Meta-analysis of case studies and revision of past and current collaborations of authors with communities across Chile. Findings The findings suggest that agency, local scale, memory and vulnerability, as fundamental concepts for disaster risk reduction (DRR) theory and practice, need to allow for ambivalences, ironies, granularization and further materializations. The authors identify these characteristics as the conditions that emerge when doing disaster research from within the disaster itself, perhaps the critical condition of what is usually known as the South. Originality/value The authors contribute to a reflexive assessment of fundamental concepts for critical disaster studies. The authors offer research-based and empirically rich redefinitions of these concepts. The authors also offer a novel understanding of the political and epistemological conditions of the “South” as both a geography and a project.


The Geo-Social Model: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Flow-Type Landslide Analysis and Prevention

February 2021

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207 Reads

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12 Citations

Sustainability

Landslide disaster risks increase worldwide, particularly in urban areas. To design and implement more effective and democratic risk reduction programs, calls for transdisciplinary approaches have recently increased. However, little attention has been paid to the actual articulation of transdisciplinary methods and their associated challenges. To fill this gap, we draw on the case of the 1993 Quebrada de Macul disaster, Chile, to propose what we label as the Geo-Social Model. This experimental methodology aims at integrating recursive interactions between geological and social factors configuring landslide for more robust and inclusive analyses and interventions. It builds upon three analytical blocks or site-specific environments in constant co-determination: (1) The geology and geomorphology of the study area; (2) the built environment, encompassing infrastructural, urban, and planning conditions; and (3) the sociocultural environment, which includes community memory, risk perceptions, and territorial organizing. Our results are summarized in a geo-social map that systematizes the complex interactions between the three environments that facilitated the Quebrada de Macul flow-type landslide. While our results are specific to this event, we argue that the Geo-Social Model can be applied to other territories. In our conclusions, we suggest, first, that landslides in urban contexts are often the result of anthropogenic disruptions of natural balances and systems, often related to the lack of place-sensitive urban planning. Second, that transdisciplinary approaches are critical for sustaining robust and politically effective landslide risk prevention plans. Finally, that inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches to landslide risk prevention need to be integrated into municipal-level planning for a better understanding of—and prevention of—socio-natural hazards.


Citations (44)


... El globo tiene espacios demarcados más allá de las divisiones estatales nacionales. Como Chile, donde el Estado a nivel central, y sin consulta a los territorios locales (Tironi 2016) ha decidido que, en ciertas partes del país, como Puchuncaví, la vida humana vale menos que la vida industrial (Hormazábal et al. 2019). Zonas de sacrificio les llaman. ...

Reference:

La basura no se va al cielo: Tecnología, ensoñación y el día después
Algo raro en el aire: Sobre la vibración tóxica del Antropoceno

... Más allá de esta heterogeneidad de perspectivas, el debate se ha caracterizado por abordar el cambio climático y la preocupación geológica como claves para entender el Antropoceno. En este sentido, se destacan los desafíos de escala y tiempo (Chernilo, 2021;Tironi y Undurraga, 2023): los cambios globales (aunque desiguales), el tiempo profundo de los cambios geológicos y, por último, los cambios relativamente rápidos de las instituciones sociales. ...

Prococaciones y tensiones del Antropoceno
  • Citing Article
  • August 2023

Estudios Públicos

... Otro elemento que ha influido en la vulnerabilidad ante desastres en Chile y la región es la disrupción cultural y la pérdida de conocimientos tradicionales. La colonización interrumpió el tejido social de las sociedades indígenas, erosionando los sistemas de saberes ancestrales que podrían haber ofrecido valiosos conocimientos sobre la preparación y respuesta ante desastres (Chocobar & Tironi, 2023). Como resultado, muchas comunidades indígenas y otras poblaciones marginadas carecen de la resiliencia y la capacidad adaptativa necesarias para enfrentar eficazmente los desastres en su región. ...

Un Sol Interior: Vulcanología Lickanantay en el Salar de Atacama

Revista de Estudios Latinoamericanos sobre Reducción del Riesgo de Desastres REDER

... Finally, the CVZA volcanoes are located within 25 km of international borders, between Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, and Peru. Andean communities have interacted with these volcanic features for more than 11 000 years -well before border delineation (Ramos Chocobar and Tironi, 2022;Loyola et al., 2022). However, the current division of borders increases the challenges of volcanic risk management since each country has multiple strategies, resources, sovereignty, and intrinsic socio-economic and political conditions playing a key role when facing natural risks (e.g. ...

An Inside Sun: Lickanantay Volcanology in the Salar de Atacama

... resistance, or in the form of its significance for spiritual or cultural identity. In 9 articles, specifically, these concerns were linked to the lived embodied experience of such environmental harm, whether (i) through direct health impacts (Beebeejaun 2021; McHenry 2021), (ii) the lived experience of water scarcity and livelihood impacts of unequal water access (Acuña and Tironi 2021;Babidge and Bolados 2018), (iii) concerns over future generations in order to care and protect them (Caretta 2020; McHenry 2017), or (iv) the emotional attachment, grounded in recreation or spiritual and cultural connections, to water and associated landscapes threatened by extraction (Banks 2017;Bisht and Gerber 2021;). ...

Extractivist droughts: Indigenous hydrosocial endurance in Quillagua, Chile
  • Citing Article
  • November 2021

The Extractive Industries and Society

... Intersections with conservation initiatives also highlight the need to overcome colonialist practices that do not account for the social costs of losing access to land and resources owing to conservation policies or inadequate participatory processes (Trisos, Auerbach, and Katti 2021;Tironi, Vega, and Antileo 2021;Staddon, Nightingale, and Shrestha 2015). Even in Amazonia, where indigenous, Quilombola, and traditional peoples have a long and recognized presence in the socioenvironmental movement, an instrumentalist perspective to conservation prevails (Lima 2019). ...

Bude uncommon: extractivist endings and the unthinkable politics of conservation in Lafkenche territory

Tapuya Latin American Science Technology and Society

... El Lente de Aproximación además reflexiona en torno al carácter fenomenológico de los desastres y sus entornos, dando lugar a un cuestionamiento epistémico y ontológico en materia de la GRD en y desde América Latina (Tironi et al., 2021). Es así como los estudios críticos de desastres consideran el contexto como una dimensión esencial en la ocurrencia de desastres, incluyendo cómo se nombran estos procesos, y a qué causas y consecuencias de larga data se asocian (Gaillard, 2021;Knowles y Loeb, 2021;Oliver-Smith, 2022;). ...

Interruptions: imagining an analytical otherwise for disaster studies in Latin America
  • Citing Article
  • October 2021

Disaster Prevention and Management An International Journal

... Risk management research has been conducted in various geographical regions. For example, a region on the plateau of mountains in Brazil was chosen for the application of a mathematical model for landslide monitoring (Konig (Acuna et al. 2021). Importantly, the proportion of the urban population in most of these countries is above the global average. ...

The Geo-Social Model: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Flow-Type Landslide Analysis and Prevention

Sustainability

... but with which we engage. In this case study, although initially starting with trees, we shift to think with soils via a fusion of scientific techniques and technologies, memories and the proliferation of skills of attentiveness and dwelling-with soils, thinking through the capacities of soils and how we and other organisms come to know and care for them (Puig De La Bellacasa, 2015;Salazar et al., 2020). ...

Thinking-with Soils: An Introduction
  • Citing Chapter
  • January 2020

... The roadblocks are, as the mayor of Tirúa put it, 'a sovereign resolution by the organised community' (quoted in Espinoza, 2020, emphasis by the authors). Thus, the barreras sanitarias are more than an emergency measure to contain the virus: by prioritising care for human life over the local economy, they represent a rejection of the capitalist model that structures Chile's social life and environmental relations (for a comprehensive discussion of territorial control during the pandemia see Tironi and Kelly, 2020). It is through this lens that we should also interpret the central government's opposition to the roadblock, expressed by the Ministry of Defence regional representative through his dismissal of the barriers as 'useless' (an assessment belied by the government's own data: after the first wave, in November 2020, the infection rate in Tirúa was less than half that of nearby municipalities such as Carahue y Cañete 5 ). ...

Care and Sovereignty: Territorial Control and the Decolonization of Disaster Risk Reduction