Subterranean Struggles

New Dynamics of Mining, Oil, and Gas in Latin America

Anthony Bebbington, Jeffrey Bury

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781477302064
  9780292748620
• eBook ISBN:
  9780292748644
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Over the past two decades, the extraction of nonrenewable resources in Latin America has given rise to many forms of struggle, particularly among disadvantaged populations. The first analytical collection to combine geographical and political ecological approaches to the post-1990s changes in Latin America's extractive economy, Subterranean Struggles closely examines the factors driving this expansion and the sociopolitical, environmental, and political economic consequences it has wrought. In this analysis, more than a dozen experts explore the many facets of struggles surrounding extraction, from protests in the vicinity of extractive operations to the everyday efforts of excluded residents who try to adapt their livelihoods while industries profoundly impact their lived spaces. The book explores the implications of extractive industry for ideas of nature, region, and nation; "resource nationalism" and environmental governance; conservation, territory, and indigenous livelihoods in the Amazon and Andes; everyday life and livelihood in areas affected by small- and large-scale mining alike; and overall patterns of social mobilization across the region. Arguing that such struggles are an integral part of the new extractive economy in Latin America, the authors document the increasingly conflictive character of these interactions, raising important challenges for theory, for policy, and for social research methodologies. Featuring works by social and natural science authors, this collection offers a broad synthesis of the dynamics of extractive industry whose relevance stretches to regions beyond Latin America.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Abbreviations
• Preface and Acknowledgments
• 1. Political Ecologies of the Subsoil
• 2. New Geographies of Extractive Industries in Latin America
• 3. Nature and Nation: Hydrocarbons, Governance, and the Territorial Logics of “Resource Nationalism” in Bolivia
• 4. Rocks, Rangers, and Resistance: Mining and Conservation Frontiers in the Cordillera Huayhuash, Peru
• 5. Water for Gold: Confronting State and Corporate Mining Discourses in Azuay, Ecuador
• 6. Territorial Transformations in El Pangui, Ecuador: Understanding How Mining Conflict Affects Territorial Dynamics, Social Mobilization, and Daily Life
• 7. Hydrocarbon Conflicts and Indigenous Peoples in the Peruvian Amazon: Mobilization and Negotiation along the Río Corrientes
• 8. Synergistic Impacts of Gas and Mining Development in Bolivia’s Chiquitanía: The Significance of Analytical Scale
• 9. Natural Resources in the Subsoil and Social Conflicts on the Surface: Perspectives on Peru’s Subsurface Political Ecology
• 10. Anatomies of Conflict: Social Mobilization and New Political Ecologies of the Andes
• 11. Conclusions
• Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index