Politics of Extraction: Territorial Rights, Participatory Institutions, and Conflict in Latin America - Hardcover

by Jaskoski (Author)

Mining and hydrocarbon production in Latin America is high-stakes for extractive firms, communities in resource-rich zones, and states. Amid global commodity price increases and liberal economic policies, the sectors have expanded dramatically in recent decades. This surge has made private
investors and governments in the region ever more committed to extraction. It also has increased alarm within local communities, which have organized around the environmental, cultural, and social impacts of mining and hydrocarbons. Moreover, activists have mobilized to demand material benefits, in
the forms of royalty distributions and direct company investment in local services and infrastructure. These conflicts take the form of legal battles, large-scale protests, and standoffs that pit communities against companies and the state, and consequently have suspended production, destabilized
politics, and expended state security resources.

In The Politics of Extraction, Maiah Jaskoski looks at how mobilized communities in Latin America's hydrocarbon and mining regions use participatory institutions to challenge extraction. In some cases, communities act within formal participatory spaces, while in others, they organize around or in
reaction to these institutions, using participatory procedures as focal points in the escalation of conflict. Based on analysis of thirty major extractive conflicts in Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru in the 2000s and 2010s, Jaskoski examines community uses of public hearings built into environmental
licensing, state-led prior consultation with native communities affected by large-scale development, and local popular consultations or referenda. She finds that communities select their strategies in response to the specific participatory challenges they confront: the trials of initiating
participatory processes, gaining inclusion in participatory events, and, for communities with such access, expressing views about extraction at the participatory stage. Surprisingly, the communities least likely to channel their concerns through state institutions are the most unified and have the
strongest guarantee of participation. Including a wealth of data and complex stories, Jaskoski provides the first systematic study of how participatory institutions either channel or exacerbate conflict over extraction.

Author Biography

Maiah Jaskoski is Associate Professor of Political Science at Northern Arizona University. She specializes in environmental and indigenous politics, military roles, security privatization, and borders, in Latin America. She is the author of Military Politics and Democracy in the Andes and numerous academic journal articles. She also co-authored and co-edited American Crossings: Border Politics in the Western Hemisphere.