So-called extractive peripheries are zones of intensive exploitation of natural resources, created and sustained by an ideological apparatus that opposes civilization to nature and center to margin (later reformulated as developed versus underdeveloped). These territories—objects of usufruct, carved out from broader geographic and social spaces of belonging—constitute one of the conditions of possibility for extractive capitalism, both because of their intrinsic wealth and because their creative marginalization allows them to be transformed into sacrifice zones. They are places occupied—in several senses—and transformed—at different scales—by actors, technologies and non-human species—local or massively drawn in—whose presence often predates the very conception of the extractive process itself. These “peripheries” are therefore endowed with a centrality and historicity that impart native characteristics and shape the Latin American histories of global capitalism.
The implementation of extractivism in our countries follows dissimilar temporalities, but is always bound to “civilizing” projects that prepare and justify the complex relationship between capital and zones of production, extraction, circulation and export of commodities. Its impact has consequences that shape present-day reality and are weighed ambivalently according to the interests and dispositions of the agents involved. These particular sites and trajectories can be approached through case studies that—starting from specific roles and perspectives—highlight the peculiarity of different scenarios, showing their mode of integration into national and transnational dynamics with economic, social, political and cultural orientations of every kind and at different levels. What is needed here is an anthropology of extractivist contexts with a longue durée approach that, as a critical social science, can take a position based first on understanding the multiple and often contradictory situations at play.
Papers should address case studies and, although they may adopt any spatio-temporal framework, must include a historical perspective that allows for analysis of the development of the issue presented. We encourage explanatory frameworks concerning the links between the activities and strategies of the various agents within the structure of domination, in the context of the different and successive state policies framing the expansion of global capitalism. We suggest addressing, though not exclusively:
Actions and projects of local and central powers in relation to their insertion into macro-regional markets.
Approaches to conflicts and disputes: forms of expression, mechanisms of control and/or regulation, and negotiation strategies.
Modes of participation of subaltern populations and dominant strata, including processes of social hybridization and mixed roles.
The inclusion and articulation of non-human objects and species in the unfolding of technical, economic, political and environmental processes and conjunctures.
We encourage approaches that relate different spatial and temporal scales in order to understand the unfolding of technical, economic, political and environmental processes and conjunctures in territories historically traversed by extractive dynamics with strong implications for the present of our communities.
