Territories of Difference , livre ebook

456

pages

English

Ebooks

2008

Écrit par
Escobar Arturo Escobar

Publié par
Duke University Press

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456

pages

English

Ebooks

2008

Lire un extrait

Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus

Publié par

Duke University Press

Date de parution

26 novembre 2008

Nombre de lectures

EAN13

9780822389439

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

2 Mo

In Territories of Difference, Arturo Escobar, author of the widely debated book Encountering Development, analyzes the politics of difference enacted by specific place-based ethnic and environmental movements in the context of neoliberal globalization. His analysis is based on his many years of engagement with a group of Afro-Colombian activists of Colombia's Pacific rainforest region, the Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN). Escobar offers a detailed ethnographic account of PCN's visions, strategies, and practices, and he chronicles and analyzes the movement's struggles for autonomy, territory, justice, and cultural recognition. Yet he also does much more. Consistently emphasizing the value of local activist knowledge for both understanding and social action and drawing on multiple strands of critical scholarship, Escobar proposes new ways for scholars and activists to examine and apprehend the momentous, complex processes engulfing regions such as the Colombian Pacific today.Escobar illuminates many interrelated dynamics, including the Colombian government's policies of development and pluralism that created conditions for the emergence of black and indigenous social movements and those movements' efforts to steer the region in particular directions. He examines attempts by capitalists to appropriate the rainforest and extract resources, by developers to set the region on the path of modernist progress, and by biologists and others to defend this incredibly rich biodiversity "hot-spot" from the most predatory activities of capitalists and developers. He also looks at the attempts of academics, activists, and intellectuals to understand all of these complicated processes. Territories of Difference is Escobar's effort to think with Afro-Colombian intellectual-activists who aim to move beyond the limits of Eurocentric paradigms as they confront the ravages of neoliberal globalization and seek to defend their place-based cultures and territories.

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Publié par

Duke University Press

Date de parution

26 novembre 2008

EAN13

9780822389439

Langue

English

Poids de l'ouvrage

2 Mo

T e r r i To r i e s o f D i f f e r e n c e

Ne w e cologi e s f or t he t we Nt y- f i r st c e Nt ury

Series Editors: Arturo Escobar,University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Dianne Rocheleau,Clark University

A John Hope Franklîn Center Book

ARTURO eSCObaR

Terri Tori es of Di fference

place, movements, life,redes

D u k e u N i v e r s i t y P r e s sDurham and London2008

Printed in the United States of America

on acidfree paper ∞

Typeset in Quadraat with Magma Compact display

by Achorn International, Inc.

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

appear on the last printed page of this book.

Some material in chapter 5 previously appeared

in David Nugent and Joan Vincent, eds.,A Companion to

the Anthropology of Politics(Oxford: Blackwell Publish

ing, 2004), 248–66, and is reprinted here

with permission of Blackwell.

Frontispiece and title page art:

page ii: based on an illustration fromLos sistemas

productivos de la comunidad negra del río Valle, Bahía

Solano, Chocó,by Carlos Tapia, Rocío Polanco, and

Claudia Leal, 1997.

page iii: based on an engraving produced by the Gente

Entintada y Parlante project, Tumaco, early 1990s.

about the seriesvii

prefaceix

acknowledgmentsxiii InTROdUCTIOn1 1pLaCE 27 2CapITaL 69 3naTURE  4dEVELOpmEnT 6 5IdEnTITY 2 6nETWORKS 24 COnCLUSIOn299 notes313

references cited381

index417

contents

AbOUT THE sERIES

Thîs serîes addresses two trends: crîtîcal conversatîons în academîc ields about nature, sustaînabîlîty, globalîzatîon, and culture, în-cludîng constructîve engagements between the natural, socîal, and human scîences; and întellectual and polîtîcal conversatîons among socîal movements and other non-academîc knowledge producers about alternatîve practîces and socîo-natural worlds. Its objectîve îs to establîsh a synergy between these theoretîcal and polîtîcal developments în both academîc and non-academîc arenas. Thîs synergy îs a sîne qua non for new thînkîng about the real promîse of emergent ecologîes. The serîes încludes works that envîsîon more lastîng and just ways of beîng-în-place and beîng-în-networks wîth a dîversîty of humans and other lîvîng and non-lîvîng beîngs. New Ecologîes for the Twenty-Fîrst Century aîms to promote a dîalogue between those who are transformîng the understandîng of the relatîonshîp between nature and culture. The serîes revîsîts exîstîng ields such as envîronmental hîstory, hîstorîcal ecology, envîronmental anthropology, ecologîcal economîcs, and cultural and polîtîcal ecology. It addresses emergîng tendencîes, such as the use of complexîty theory to rethînk a range of questîons on the nature–culture axîs. It also deals wîth epîstemologîcal and ontologî-cal concerns, buîldîng brîdges between the varîous forms of know-îng and ways of beîng embedded în the multîplîcîty of practîces of socîal actors worldwîde. Thîs serîes hopes to foster convergences among dîfferently located actors and to provîde a forum for authors and readers to wîden the ields of theoretîcal înquîry, professîonal practîce, and socîal struggles that characterîze the current envîron-mental arena.

preface

This book has been twelve years in the making. It has grown and stalled over this period in tandem with the demands and vicissitudes of my in tellectual, personal, and professional life. I started on the journey that resulted in this book in 1991–92, when I ﬁrst developed the proposal which took me to Colombia in January of 1993 for a year of ﬁeld research, then simply entitled “AfroColombian Responses to Modernization and Development.” During that initial year, I assembled a small research team to work in the southern Paciﬁc region, at that point still custom arily described as a poor, forgotten, hot, humid forest crisscrossed by innumerable rivers and inhabited by black and indigenous groups—a litoral recóndito, as Sofonía Yacup, a local author and politician, put it in the 1930s. By 1993, the region was fully immersed in an ambitious strat egy of development that had started in the mid1980s; armed with the tools given to researchers by the discursive critique of development of the 1980s, I set out to investigate ethnographically both the cultural and ecological impact of the various projects and the forms of resistance they faced from the black groups of the river communities. Or so I thought. What I discovered soon after my arrival was that the situation was far more complex than I had realized from a distance. Indeed, it has not ceased to grow in complexity, posing unprece dented challenges to research method, politics, and understanding. First, two or three months into the project, we recognized that besides statesponsored development and nascent capitalist enterprises (chieﬂy African oil palm plantations and industrial shrimp farming), albeit closely linked to them, there were two crucial factors in the struggle over the representation and fate of the region. The ﬁrst was the concern with the region’s biodiversity; the region was identiﬁed as one of the most important “biodiversity hot spots” in the world, and our arrival there coincided with the beginning of a novel, internationally funded conser vation strategy of ambitious scope. As in other hot spots of this kind, la conservación de la biodiversidadhad become the battle cry of the state, nongovernmental organizations (ngos), academics, and local leaders alike. Closely related to conservation was a small but highly committed and articulate social movement of black communities. Our initial con versations with activists in this movement, while not immediately trust ing, were nevertheless auspicious. In midJune of that year (1993), our small research team held the ﬁrst daylong workshop with a group of

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