Our work this year began with the Conference of Latin American Geography, held in Antigua, Guatemala January 2-4. While we at Extractives@Clark organized two CLAG sessions related to extraction on the themes of representations and re-conceptualizations, and governance in times of violence, work on these topics has come to form a substantial portion of work in Latin American geography. This year's CLAG even had some time conflicts between relevant sessions and presentations! This post discusses specific contributions to the Conference and provides links to recent papers from some of the authors.
Two sessions on January 3 took up many ways of observing and framing "Extractive Industries and everyday life." Guadalupe García Prado discussed how opposition to local mining has restored the Xinka ethnic condition in the self-identification and response of local communities. Elisabet Dueholm Rasch relayed experiences from territory defenders of the pervasiveness with which their activism and criminalization affect their interpersonal lives. (Find a recent paper from Rasch on Indigenous beauty pageants as a way of re-appropriating Indigenous identity HERE)
Aaron Malone from the Colorado School of Mines presented work from Peru on the interconnections between artisanal mining and other livelihood activities such as agriculture and aquaculture. (A recent paper from Malone about remittances and development is HERE). Gisselle Vila Benites spoke on community-driven extraction in Chocó, Colombia, and Sol Pérez Jiménez on the historical context of extremely impactful and contentious smelters in North America. Elena Tjandra presented a framework for understanding the ways in which people "live with" mining through the everyday and experienced, and Nadia Degregori took up the closure of Barrick's Pierina mine in Peru to highlight an understudied phase of extractive development.
Zoey Pearson and Emily Billo presented. Zoey on the ways in which the epistomologies, relationships, and everyday dimensions of a Corporate Social Responsibility program in Ecuador reproduces neocolonialism (see their paper on this subject HERE). And in the "governance in times of violence" session, Belén Noroña described the erasure, undermining, and silencing of Indigenous epistomologies in the Ecuadorian Amazon, featuring accounts from the dreams of interview subjects, as well as striking, evocative art from her research team. Belén's very recent paper, on the nature of coalitions including local actors and foreign allies, can be found "ahead of print" in the Journal of Latin American Geography HERE.
This is the second iteration of our "What's New" feature - Please send us any links to stories or papers that would be of interest to the communities of research and practice around issues of extraction! extractives@clarku.edu