Neoextractivism and Territorial Disputes in Latin America : Social-ecological Conflict and Resistance on the Front Lines

This book reflects on the continuing expansion of extractive forms of capitalist development into new territories in Latin America, and the resistance movements that are trying to combat the ecological and social destruction that follows.

Latin American development models continue to prioritise extractivism: the intensive exploitation and exportation of nature in its primary commodity form. This constant expansion of the extractive frontier into new territories leads to forms of place-based resistance, negotiation and struggle in which competing territorial projects and claims are at stake. This book uncovers the underlying trends and dynamics of these ‘territorialities in dispute’, and the socio- ecological resistance movements that are emerging as marginalized communities struggle to reclaim their territorial rights and defend and protect their right of access to the global commons. A focus on territorialities in dispute renders visible the unsustainable expansion of extractivist territories and opens up new horizons to learn from these processes and to consider post-extractivist/post-development imaginings of another world and alternate futures – as well as the challenges to their realisation.

This book will be of interest to both students and researchers in the fields of international development, political ecology, critical geography, social anthropology as well as to activists engaged in socio-ecological/eco-territorial movements.