Compare The Politics of Extraction by Maiah Jaskoski, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters

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 privateinvestors 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, inthe 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, destabilizedpolitics, 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 "inreaction 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 environmentallicensing, 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 initiatingparticipatory 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 thestrongest 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. | The Politics of Extraction by Maiah Jaskoski, Hardcover | Indigo Chapters