Latin American Political Economy publishes new, relevant, and empiricallygrounded scholarship that deepens our understanding of contemporary Latin American political economy and contributes to the formulation and evaluation of new theories that are both context-sensitive and subject to broader comparisons. Inspired by the need to provide new analytical perspectives for understanding the massive social, political, and economic transformations underway in Latin America, the series is directed at researchers and practitioners interested in resurrecting political economy as a primary research area in the developing world. In thematic terms, the series seeks to promote vital debate on the interactions between economic, political, and social processes; it is especially concerned with how fi ndings may further our understanding of development models, the socio-political institutions that sustain them, and the practical problems they confront. In methodological terms, the series showcases cross-disciplinary research that is empirically rich and sensitive to context and that leads to new forms of description, concept formation, causal inference, and theoretical innovation. The series editors welcome submissions that address patterns of democratic politics, dependency and development, state formation and the rule of law, inequality and identity, and global linkages. The series editors and advisory board members belong to

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In this paper, we analyze state practices of border-making through an ethnographic focus on Ecuadorian Amazonia and the Waorani, an Indigenous society, who, before sustained contact with the outside world began in 1958, possessed stark spatial and social borders often reinforced through warfare. Following that contact and the creation of various iterations of a legally-demarcated Waorani territory, the spatial and social borders of Waorani culture, based on a common property regime, came into conflict with the borders produced by the state in cooperation with transnational capitalism in the form of the oil industry. We discuss how these shifting borders led to cascading effects on Waorani reciprocity, their relationship to natural resources, sense of security and designation of membership in the community. Finally, we discuss how the leftist Ecuadorian state under President Rafael Correa justifies and facilitates the country's oil-focused spatial processes through a post-neoliberal discourse.

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