Driving development in the Amazon: Extending infrastructural citizenship with political ecology in Bolivia

Abstract

In this paper, I extend the analytical framework of infrastructural citizenship with political ecology and reorientate analysis to rural geographies, extractive infrastructure and indigenous territorial movements. Drawing from recent fieldwork in Bolivia, I argue that an extended conceptual framework of ‘infrastructural ecological citizenship’ better acknowledges the multiple, changing and contested ways that people and rural places co-exist and how these relationships are being reworked as infrastructure and citizenship are co-constituted. I use this framework to analyse a conflict over road building in an indigenous territory and national park in lowland Bolivia – the Isiboro Sécure Indigenous Territory and National Park ( Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure; TIPNIS), revealing how the road building project weakened the pre-existing political and material infrastructures that underpinned modes of indigenous territorial citizenship within Bolivia’s Plurinational State, as well as foregrounding how transnational extractive capital has shaped negotiations of territorial place-based citizenship in the TIPNIS. In doing so, I contribute to debates on infrastructural citizenship, resource extraction and sustainable development, revealing the ongoing potency of place-based claims on land and related claims for territorial citizenship.

The geographies of colonial infrastructures: Mobility, im/materiality, and politics on walking trails in the Middle East

“…A rich literature draws our attention to the mobilities and temporalities of colonialism (Carby, 2019; Cowen, 2020; Khalili, 2020; Lowe, 2015; Sheller, 2018). This literature is complemented by increasingly nuanced work on infrastructure in geography and related disciplines (Arefin, 2019; Brady, 2021; Curley, 2021; Gergan & McCreary, 2022; Hope, 2022; Manchanda & Plonski, 2022; Millington, 2018; Simone, 2004, 2021; Solomon, 2021). A focus on walking trails as infrastructure provides a means to bring together literatures on infrastructures, colonialism, and mobilities in nuanced ways.…”

“…Through infrastructure, temporalities and mobilities become embodied and im/materialised in ways important to understanding the geographies of colonialism. The past 10 years have seen an ‘infrastructure turn’ with an intensification of research on infrastructure across geography and related fields (Arefin, 2019; Brady, 2021; Curley, 2021; Gergan & McCreary, 2022; Hope, 2022; Manchanda & Plonski, 2022; Millington, 2018; Simone, 2004, 2021; Solomon, 2021). Included within this work are explorations of alternative forms of citizenship and politics created and contested by infrastructure (Alderman & Goodwin, 2022; Brady, 2021; Hope, 2022; Lemanski, 2020) and the relationship between infrastructure and nationalist politics.…”

Technology of detachment: The promise of renewable energy and its contentious reality in the south of Colombia

“…Instead of following advanced understanding of sustainability issues and the necessity for a just energy transition, this turn went hand in hand with a new wave of extractive practices that exploit raw materials for the export markets (Gudynas, 2018;Svampa, 2019). Infrastructural investments have mostly followed the goal to enable the advancements of these industries into evermore remote regions of "untapped" resources and energies (Bebbington et al, 2020;Hope, 2021;Uribe, 2019).…”

Quem paga o preço? Controvérsias socioecológicas associadas à transição energética na América do Sul

“…On the other hand, it recuperated the public control of national resource exploitation. Then, a wave of neo-extractivisms paid the price of social equity and progressive reforms (HOPE, 2022).…”