Limits to Decolonization: Indigeneity, Territory, and Hydrocarbon Politics in the Bolivian Chaco

Penelope Anthias

Published by Cornell University Press 2018

Limits to Decolonization

Indigeneity, Territory, and Hydrocarbon Politics in the Bolivian Chaco

Penelope Anthias

In the series Cornell Series on Land: New Perspectives on Territory, Development, and Environment

https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501714290

Overview
Contents

About this book

Penelope Anthias’s Limits to Decolonization addresses one of the most important issues in contemporary indigenous politics: struggles for territory. Based on the experience of thirty-six Guaraní communities in the Bolivian Chaco, Anthias reveals how two decades of indigenous mapping and land titling have failed to reverse a historical trajectory of indigenous dispossession in the Bolivian lowlands. Through an ethnographic account of the "limits" the Guaraní have encountered over the course of their territorial claim—from state boundaries to landowner opposition to hydrocarbon development—Anthias raises critical questions about the role of maps and land titles in indigenous struggles for self-determination.

Anthias argues that these unresolved territorial claims are shaping the contours of an era of "post-neoliberal" politics in Bolivia. Limits to Decolonization reveals the surprising ways in which indigenous peoples are reframing their territorial projects in the context of this hydrocarbon state and drawing on their experiences of the limits of state recognition. The tensions of Bolivia’s "process of change" are revealed, as Limits to Decolonization rethinks current debates on cultural rights, resource politics, and Latin American leftist states. In sum, Anthias reveals the creative and pragmatic ways in which indigenous peoples contest and work within the limits of postcolonial rule in pursuit of their own visions of territorial autonomy.

Author / Editor information

Penelope Anthias holds a postdoctoral position in the Department of Food and Resource Economics at the University of Copenhagen.

Reviews

Michael J. Watts, Class of 63 Professor, University of California, Berkeley:

Anthias offers an entirely new and compelling account of the relations between hydrocarbons, identity, and space. Ethnographically rich, historically framed, and theoretically sophisticated, Limits to Decolonization is a provocative and powerful account of contemporary extractivism, movements from below and the operations of power in indigenous struggles.

Bret Gustafson, Associate Professor of Sociological Anthropology, Washington University:

Limits to Decolonization is a sensitive account of a peoples' struggle for land and livelihood against the weight of centuries of colonialism and the power of the new extractivism. It is a great piece of work.

Aaron Bobrow-Strain, Associate Professor of Politics, Whitman College:

With this book Penelope Anthias has the potential to shape scholarly debates around indigenous struggles, neoliberalism, and postcolonial rule in important ways. Limits to Decolonization is a thoughtful challenge to the prevailing scholarship.

Limits to Decolonization demonstrates the limitations of indigenous mapping as a liberatory project, and the emergence of a form of hydrocarbon citizenship, the cultural implications of which are as yet unclear. It is a most welcome addition to the growing literature on contemporary Bolivia.

Her critical reflections on decolonization will be of interest to anthropologists and geographers seeking a ground-up perspective on how extractive economies transform marginalized communities.

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	vii
Abbreviations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Note on Pseudonyms Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xi
INTRODUCTION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Imagining Territory Contingent Articulations, Uncertain Compromises Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	19
2. Mapping Territory The Limits of Postcolonial Geography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	49
3. Titling Territory Race, Space, and Law at an Indigenous Frontier Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	85
4. Inhabiting Territory Land and Livelihoods in Tarairí Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	145
5. Extractive Encounters Struggles over Land and Gas Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	181
6. Governable Spaces Territory and Autonomy in a Hydrocarbon State Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	204
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	242
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	251
Glossary Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	267
References Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	269
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	283

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 312
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 7
- Images: 16
- Other: 16 b&w halftones, 7 maps
Keywords: indigenous peoples; land rights; counter-mapping; Latin America; extraction

eBook

Published: March 15, 2018
ISBN: 9781501714290