Our project

Coline Chevrin

In 2009 the Uruguayan author E. Gudynas’s text “10 Tesis Urgentes sobre el Neo-Extrativismo” (10 urgent tesis on neo-extractivism) introduced the new political economic concept of neo-extractivism. Since then it has been widely used in Latin America and the rest of the world.

As analyzed by Mezzadra and Neilson the notion of ‘neo-extractivism’ has emerged in this context as a critical lens with which to view wider transformations of capitalism even under ‘progressive’ governments in the region. “Debates on this topic have unfolded within the framework of what has been described as a transition from the ‘Washington consensus’ to the ‘commodities consensus’ (see for instance Massuh 2012, Svampa and Viale 2014, Svampa 2015). Speaking of ‘neo-extractivism’ implies a reference to the continuity of a long history of the region’s insertion within the capitalist world system through violent forms of raw material extraction and associated processes of dispossession. What the prefix ‘neo’ signals is, on the one hand, a shift towards Asia as the main market for Latin American commodities and, on the other hand, the fact that the ‘re-primarization’ of the economy is connected to the state’s ability to use and direct a certain part of the extraordinary rent from natural resources to the financing of social policies. Critics of ‘neoextractivism’ make strong arguments against the qualities of ‘development’ connected to this primacy of extractive rent, shedding light on environmental pillaging, land grabbing, and the disruption and dispossession of Indigenous and peasant economies.” (Mezzadra and Neilson, 2017:2)

With this #syllabus, and following these opening considerations, our project is to interrogate the concept, trying to understand its contradictions through a dialectical approach. By asking the classic questions What – Where – When – Who – How and using them as a guideline for different case studies, we will try to break down the idea of neo-extractivism and complicate its understanding. What does “neo” mean and what are the ruptures and continuities with historic extractivism? What are the categories of actors engaged with it? What is the specific role of the State? How to examine neo-extractivism through different scales, in different places and incorporating the wide varieties of commodities that are involved? What kinds of social practices and commoning can we detect around/against it?

We will use a variety of material and formats to think through each case, maintaining the inherent chaos of a hashtag research while bringing up resources that invite a more complex understanding of the issue at stake. The geographic and topical variety of the cases will conform a kind of countertopography that will also help us think through the concepts of Global South/North.

Mezzadra, S., & Neilson, B. (2017). On the multiple frontiers of extraction: Excavating contemporary capitalism. Cultural Studies, 31(2–3), 185–204. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2017.1303425

#resistance to digital neo-extractivism

Zoe Goldstein

Some Commoning (art) Projects that Combat Digital Neo-Extractivism: 

Everest Pipkin’s Image Scrubber (tool to remove faces from any online photo, shown above)

micha cárdenas‘s “autonets” (wearable mesh networks that radiate private communication servers so that people can join ad-hoc communities/avoid tracking)

Abram Stern‘s “Oversight Machines” (alternative visualizations of government surveillance footage)

Dorothy R. Stern, “Refresh”(collaborative & politically engaged platform for art & tech)

Disco Co-Op (projects in distributed cooperativism)

American Artist, 1956/2056 (critique of predictive policing that imagines a future where blackness isn’t criminalized)

Feral File (non-blockchain platform for sharing NFTs with minimal enviro impact)

The dialectics of Neo-Extractivism and Resistance

Coline Chevrin

How do these new forms of extractivism and the rearticulation of the action of the State around it also generate new forms of resistance? What are the different ways of organizing that emerge and develop in the interstices of neo-extractivist activities? If the soybean production models has drastically transformed landscapes, the people’s combative and creative organizing is also reshaping territories. We can see different territorialities in tension. A specific attention needs to be paid to the different scales of the impact of soybean production as well as of the resistance. Embodied understanding of the dispossesion and contamination have led to different responses. Class, race and gender are all at play in the different social movements, that acknowledge each other throughout different places, stretching past national-state borders and building regional and international solidarity and alternatives.

Brent, Z. W. (2015). Territorial restructuring and resistance in Argentina. The Journal of Peasant Studies, 42(3–4), 671–694. https://doi.org/10.1080/03066150.2015.1013100

https://civileats.com/2020/09/30/brazils-landless-workers-persist-through-agroecology/

Leguizamón, A. (2019). The Gendered Dimensions of Resource Extractivism in Argentina’s Soy Boom. Latin American Perspectives, 46(2), 199–216. https://doi.org/10.1177/0094582X18781346

https://www.globalagriculture.org/flagship-projects/the-mothers-of-ituzaingo.html

Introducing The United Republic Of Soybeans

Coline Chevrin
Map of the United Republic of Soybeans as defined by Syngenta
Map of the United Republic of Soybeans as defined by Syngenta

The United Republic of Soybeans is the name Syngenta multinational company gave to an entire region of Latin America, namely the Southern Cone, comprising the countries of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and Bolivia in an advertisement published by conservative Argentine newspaper Clarín and La Nación in 2003. While this example of neocolonial toponomy by a private company migth seem surprising, it needs to be inscribed in a longer history of extractivism in the region. After all, Argentina’s name -as well as the name Rio de la Plata- directly refer to the activity of silver mining developed by the European colonizers since the conquest of the Americas in the 16th century. While this add clearly challenged the sovereignty of the Nation-States in favor of an absolute territorialization by a private multinational, it seems particularly interesting to analyze the process at play. Who are the actors claiming sovereignty and a right to self-determination regarding the productive model in the region? What kind of conflicts and alternative practices have developed around the soybean extractive frontier?

The following texts introduce the case and set an initial definition to think through the genealogies of extractivism and neo-extractivism and ruptures and continuities in the practices that have impacted the region.

Svampa, M. (2019). Introduction and Dimensions of Neo-Extractivism, Defining Institutions in Neo-extractivism in Latin America: Socio-environmental Conflicts, The Territorial Turn, and New Political Narratives (1st ed.). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108752589

https://grain.org/article/entries/4749-the-united-republic-of-soybeans-take-two

Complicating the action of the State in Neo-Extractivism

Coline Chevrin

If the rupture and continuities between extractivism and neo-extractivism are related to the action of the State, how can we understand the contradictions of the State action in the case of soybean production? Specifically understanding that the Nation-States of the United Republic of Soybeans have been part of the new-left government of Latin America, how have these states promoted, regulated, limited and reformulated extractive practices within their development projects?

How do these production models relate to the world system and dependence mechanisms at the global scale? How do different categories of the population interact with the State in order to deepen the model or resist and promote alternative development?

Cordoba, D., Chiappe, M., Abrams, J., & Selfa, T. (2017). Fuelling Social Inclusion? Neo-extractivism, State-Society Relations and Biofuel Policies in Latin America’s Southern Cone. Development and Change, 49. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12362

Fabricant, N., & Gustafson, B. (2014). Moving Beyond the Extractivism Debate, Imagining New Social Economies. NACLA Report on the Americas, 47(4), 40–45. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714839.2014.11721813

Countermapping as commoning

Coline Chevrin

How does the practice of countermapping constitutes a resistance to the disposession and a mecanism of commoning?

Through different methods of collective mapping or GIS, people – activists, inhabitants, associations, scholars – have organized repositories of subaltern knowledge. They render visible the dispossession but also the day to day practices of resistance and life that exist within the neo-extractivist frontier.

Iconoclasistas – Republica Toxica de la soja:

Républica tóxica de la soja

Consult the international project of Environmental Justice Atlas https://ejatlas.org/commodity/soybeans

Visualize the landscapes of Soybean disposession, land, water and air contamination with Pino Solana’s documentary “a Journey to the Fumigated towns”:

aging infrastructures for obsolete energy regimes III

Bibi Calderaro
Danskammer Power Plant on Hudson River in city of Newburgh, NY – credit Scenic Hudson
 
https://nyacknewsandviews.com/2020/09/earth-matters-the-proposed-danskammer-natural-gas-plant/
still being sold as safe
 
https://www.danskammerenergy.com/faqs/
and if you want to do something about it
 
 

is “neo-extractivism” applicable in the global North?

Bibi Calderaro
Jacob Hannah for The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/03/nyregion/documents-reveal-new-york-state-agencys-role-in-adirondacks-mining-proposal.html

Neo-extractivism as a concept was defined in the first decade of 2000 as progressive governments particularly in South America embraced new forms of extraction, particularly as it pertained to minerals, fossil fuels and monoculture agriculture (Gudynas, 2009). Here the State not only took the role of private companies in their classical extractivist operations, but they enhanced the efficiency of extraction while transforming excedent into new forms of social welfare. Thus, they protected the operations from critique and debate and used these for political purposes. Neo-extractivist social and environmental negative effects were thus neglected or put aside, while arguing that these were the sacrifices needed in order to develop and industrialize the country.

Since then, the term has been widely used to extend to similar operations in all of the global South. The State’s absence or participation is pivotal to understanding the difference between classical and neo-extractionisms. The State’s role has been typically displaced in the global North where the private sector has had a central place in the economy, yet the State is always already backing this regime through a diversity of jurisdictional infrastructure (if nothing else).

Perhaps the term can be applied to extractive operations in and of the global North, challenging the need for a disclosed centrality of the State? Within US and Canada both classical and neo-extractivist operations having to do with fossil-based energy regimes and agricultural practices can be found.

The following article, although covering Canadian territory, unmasks the political roots of resource-based conflicts

https://www.mdpi.com/2076-0787/5/3/55/htm

and a general in depth overview explains it further

http://unevenearth.org/2020/08/extractivism/