1st Edition
From Extractivism to Sustainability Scenarios and Lessons from Latin America
This book investigates how extractive capitalism has developed over the past three decades, what dynamics of resistance have been deployed to combat it, and whether extractivism can ever be transformed into being a part of a progressive development path.
It was not until the 20th century that the extraction of natural resources and raw materials took on a decidedly capitalist form, with the global north extracting primary commodities from the global south as a means of capital accumulation. This book investigates whether extractivism, despite its well-documented negative and destructive socioenvironmental impacts and the powerful forces of resistance that it has generated, could ever be transformed into a sustainable post-development strategy. Drawing on diverse sectoral forms of extractivism (mining, fossil fuels, agriculture), this book analyses the dynamics of both the forces of resistance generated by the advance of extractive capital and alternate scenarios for a more sustainable and liveable future. The book draws particularly on the Latin American experience, where both the propensity of capitalism towards crisis and the development of resistance dynamics to ‘extractive’ capital have had their greatest impact in the neoliberal era.
This book will be of interest to researchers and students across development studies, economics, political economy, environmental studies, Indigenous studies, and Latin American affairs.
Introduction
Part 1: The Contemporary Dynamics of Global Capitalism
Chapter 1: The contradictions and verities of capitalism
Raúl Delgado Wise
Chapter 2: The geoeconomics and geopolitics of extractive capital in Latin America
Henry Veltmeyer
Part II: Extractivism in the Mines and the Countryside
Chapter 3: Mexico’s mining and petroleum policies under AMLO: A turn to neo-extractivism?
Darcy Tetreault
Chapter 4: The power politics of agro-extractivism for climate stewardship
Arturo Ezquerro-Cañete, Alberto Alonso Fradejas and Ben McKay
Chapter 5: Water, land and gold: Extractivism and the environment in Colombia
Carolina Arias Hurtado and León Felipe Cubillos Quintero
Part III: Towards a Sustainable Development Pathway: Extractivism or a New Industrial Policy?
Chapter 6: Is there a role for extractivism in a post-development transition towards sustainability?
Juan Carlos Moreno-Brid, Alicia Puyana and Stefanie Garry
Chapter 7: The green energy transition: Expansion and deepening of extractivism
Alicia Puyana and Isabel Rodríguez Peña
Chapter 8: The new geographies of an energy transition: A challenge or a developmental opportunity?
Jewellord Nem Singh
Part IV: Resistance on the Extractive Frontier
Chapter 9: Reloaded neo-extractivism, multi-actor conflicts and alternative horizons: Keys to the socio-ecological crisis
Pabel Camilo López Flores and Anna Preiser
Chapter 10: Beyond corporate social responsibility: New territorial management strategies for defeating community-based resistance to extractivism
Fernando I. Leiva
Chapter 11: Communities in resistance: Forging the communitarian revolutionary subject
David Barkin
Part V: Post-Extractivist Alternatives
Chapter 12: Post-extractivist transitions: Concepts, sequences and examples
Eduardo Gudynas
Chapter 13: Sumak Kawsay for Indigenous Women
Gabriela Gallardo
Chapter 14: Commune socialism: Self-management, popular power and autonomy in Venezuela
Dario Azzellini
Chapter 15: Development beyond extractivism: Post-extractivist alternatives and pathways
Henry Veltmeyer and Arturo Ezquerro-Cañete
Biography
Henry Veltmeyer is Senior Research Professor at the Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, Mexico, and Professor Emeritus of International Development Studies (IDS) at Saint Mary’s University, Canada, with a specialized interest in Latin American development.
Arturo Ezquerro-Cañete is Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Latin American Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences (CALAS) at the University of Guadalajara, Mexico.
