Political Ecology and Environmental Thought in Latin America

Political Ecology and Environmental Thought in Latin America

Joanna Page

This seminar will explore key concepts in ecological and environmental thought in Latin America. One of the world’s most biodiverse regions, Latin America has suffered environmental damage at a disproportionate scale as a result of mining, deforestation, industrial contamination, monocrop agriculture, and other forms of habit destruction. Recent years have seen a huge increase in local conflicts over environmental issues as well as a growth in organizations that link local activists to regional and transnational networks.

Political ecology and environmental thought have unfolded in Latin America as a distinctively interdisciplinary and intercultural set of paradigms and practices that are often forged at the intersection of academia and activism. These approaches also seek to decolonize knowledge by facilitating a critical dialogue between Western science and traditional (indigenous) ecological knowledge. Guided by the work of thinkers such as Enrique Leff, Eduardo Gudynas, Arturo Escobar, Maristella Svampa, and Leonardo Boff, we will focus on several themes that have developed in Latin American ecological thought in recent decades, including the coloniality of nature, relational ontologies, biocentrism, buen vivir, the ethics of care, the rights of nature, and the commons. As a case study, we will explore the debates around transgenic maize in Mexico and how these were staged in exhibitions produced by the interdisciplinary research group Arte+Ciencia in 2012-14.

Required reading

• Gudynas, Eduardo. ‘Buen Vivir: Today’s Tomorrow’. Development 54, no. 4 (December 2011): 441-47
• Escobar, Arturo. Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible, trans. David Frye (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2020), Chapter 4 (‘Sentipensar with the Earth: Territorial Struggles and the Ontological Dimension of the Epistemologies of the South’)
• Svampa, Maristella. ‘Commodities Consensus: Neoextractivism and Enclosure of the Commons in Latin America’. The South Atlantic Quarterly 114, no. 1 (January 2015): 65-82

Further reading

• Alimonda, Héctor. ‘Paisajes del Volcán de Agua: Aproximación a la Ecología Política latinoamericana’. Gestión y Ambiente 9, no. 3 (2006): 45–54.
• Bartra, Armando. ‘Hacer milpa’. Ciencias (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México 92–93 (October 2008): 42–45.
• Boff, Leonardo. El cuidado esencial: Ética de lo humano, compasión por la Tierra. Translated by Juan Valverde. Madrid: Editorial Trotta, 2002.
• Boff, Leonardo. Ecologia: Grito da Terra, Grito dos Pobres. Rio de Janeiro: Sextante, 2004.
• Escobar, Arturo. ‘Desde abajo, por la izquierda, y con la tierra: La diferencia de Abya Yala/ Afro/ Latino/ América’. In Ecología Política Latinoamericana: Pensamiento crítico, diferencia latinoamericana y rearticulación epistémica, edited by Héctor Alimonda, Catalina Toro Pérez, and Facundo Martín, 51–68. Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2017.
• Escobar, Arturo. Designs for the Pluriverse: Radical Interdependence, Autonomy, and the Making of Worlds. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2018.
• Escobar, Arturo. Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible. Translated by David Frye. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020.
• Escobar, Arturo. Sentipensar con la tierra: nuevas lecturas sobre desarrollo, territorio y diferencia. Medellín: Ediciones UNAULA (Universidad Autónoma Latinoamericana), 2014.
• Gómez-Barris, Macarena. The Extractive Zone: Social Ecologies and Decolonial Perspectives. Durham: Duke University Press, 2017.
• Gudynas, Eduardo. ‘Deep Ecologies in the Highlands and Rainforests: Finding Naess in the Neotropics’. Worldviews: Global Religions, Culture, and Ecology 21, no. 3 (1 January 2017): 262–75.
• Gudynas, Eduardo. Extractivismos. Ecología, economía y política de un modo de entender el desarrollo y la Naturaleza. Cochabamba, Bolivia: Centro de Documentación e Información Bolivia (CEDIB), 2015.
• Huanacuni Mamani, Fernando. Buen Vivir/Vivir Bien: Filosofía, Políticas, Estrategias y Experiencias Regionales Andinas. Lima: Coordinadora Andina de Organizaciones Indígenas – CAOI, 2010.
• Leff, Enrique. Discursos sustentables. Mexico: Siglo XXI, 2008.
• Leff, Enrique. ‘Latin American Environmental Thinking: A Heritage of Knowledge for Sustainability’. Environmental Ethics 34, no. 4 (Winter 2012): 431-50.
• Leff, Enrique. ‘Political Ecology: A Latin American Perspective’. Desenvolvimento e Meio Ambiente 35, no. 1 (1 January 2015): 29-64
• Leff, Enrique. ‘Las relaciones de poder del conocimiento en el campo de la ecología política: Una mirada desde el sur’. In Ecología Política Latinoamericana: Pensamiento crítico, diferencia latinoamericana y rearticulación epistémica, edited by Héctor Alimonda, Catalina Toro Pérez, and Facundo Martín, 129–65. Buenos Aires: CLACSO, 2017.
• Martinez-Alier, Joan, Michiel Baud, and Héctor Sejenovich. ‘Origins and Perspectives of Latin American Environmentalism’. In Environmental Governance in Latin America, edited by Fábio de Castro, Barbara Hogenboom, and Michiel Baud, 29–57. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2016..
• Noguera, Patricia. ‘Augusto Angel-Maya and Environmental Philosophy in Colombia’. Environmental Ethics 34 (2012): 361-70
• Rozzi, Ricardo. ‘South American Environmental Philosophy: Ancestral Amerindian Roots and Emergent Academic Branches’. Environmental Ethics 34, no. 4 (Winter 2012): 339-66
• Simbaña, Floresmilo. ‘El sumak kawsay como proyecto político’. La línea de fuego, 12 April 2011.
• De Sousa Santos, Boaventura. Epistemologies of the South: Justice Against Epistemicide. London and New York: Routledge, 2014.
• Svampa, Maristella, and Enrique Viale. Maldesarrollo: La Argentina del extractivismo y el despojo. Buenos Aires: Katz Editores, 2014.
• Yánez, Ivonne, Melissa Moreano, and Elizabeth Bravo, eds. Ecología política en la mitad del mundo: Luchas ecologistas y reflexiones sobre la naturaleza en el Ecuador. Quito: Abya-Yala, 2017.