Unearthing Conflict

Li, Fabiana

doi:10.1515/9780822375869

Cited by 33 publications

(5 citation statements)

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“…Even while critiquing the “simulated” nature of bureaucratic practices, they nonetheless uphold the authority of environmental governance institutions they see as having abandoned their moral and civic responsibilities. Like the technoscientific interventions analyzed by Sawyer (2004), Li (2015) and Graeter (2017), independent auditing corroborates the political and moral claims of residents on technical grounds and provides a means of legally contesting development projects that threaten the ecosystems on which they depend. As these and other authors have pointed out, this technocratic approach often undermines alternative forms of knowledge and politics.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 55%

“…Under neoliberalism, this stewardship role has been increasingly carried out via the implementation of technocratic modes of environmental governance, implying a new role for scientific expertise in public life. This shift has, in turn, influenced grassroots efforts aimed at opening new spaces of accountability in which governments and corporations ideally answer to citizens for the environmental risks and harms associated with development projects (Graeter 2017; Li 2015; Sawyer 2004). Important work has focused on how the incommensurability of ways of knowing and valuing territories and places contributes to environmental conflict in contemporary Latin America (de la Cadena 2015; Liffman 2017) as well as how “participatory” decision‐making processes offered as a technocratic solution to such conflicts ultimately work to soften and circumscribe opposition (Li 2016).…”

Section: The Mia As Artifact Anchor and Point Of Entrymentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Technical struggles over the correct application of extant regulations then become politics in an administrative key, “embedded in and prefigured by political struggles” (Schwegler 2008, 683), rather than a displacement or depoliticization of politics (Escobar 1995; Ferguson 1994). Recent anthropological work on the deployment of expert knowledge in environmental disputes in Latin America has focused on the use of technoscientific data to substantiate political or moral claims (Graeter 2017; Sawyer 2004) and has underscored the ways in which the form and process of environmental review procedures actually work to limit state responsibility in cases of conflict (Li 2015). I deepen this discussion by showing how independent auditors insert themselves into what is intended to be a self‐monitoring mechanism typical of neoliberal accountability measures (Strathern 2000).…”

Section: The Mia As Artifact Anchor and Point Of Entrymentioning

confidence: 99%

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“Countering Documents with Documents”: The Politics of Independent Environmental Auditing in Mexico

Richard

2021

PoLAR

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Environmental impact statements are designed to enable rational calculation of the ecological risks of proposed development projects and to serve as a basis for institutional decision making. In Mexico, a neo‐extractivist “boom” has led to massive ecosystem loss and environmental activists are increasingly under threat of violence. Now these same activists and the residents affected by development projects have targeted these bureaucratic instruments as key points of legal intervention and political mobilization. This article analyzes how volunteer scientists conduct independent audits of environmental impact statements and how their work provides the grounds for critiquing the state's performance of public reason. Independent audit constitutes an innovative form of administrative politics that seeks simultaneously to hold bureaucrats accountable and open the decision‐making process to the participation of excluded actors. [expertise, governance, environmental movements, science, Mexico]

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 55%

Section: The Mia As Artifact Anchor and Point Of Entrymentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Mia As Artifact Anchor and Point Of Entrymentioning

confidence: 99%

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“Countering Documents with Documents”: The Politics of Independent Environmental Auditing in Mexico

Richard

2021

PoLAR

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“…Der Berg ist für die verschiedenen Beteiligten Wasser-und Lebensspender, ein technisch modifizierbares und ersetzbares Objekt oder aber ein apu. 1484 Der Quilish tritt mit verschiedenen Menschen in verschiedene Beziehungen und multipliziert sich gewissermaßen. 1485 Die lokale Bevölkerung bringt somit bislang stumme Entitäten dazu, sich an dem Konflikt zu beteiligen.…”

Section: Heterogenität Der Beteiligten Akteur*innenunclassified

“…1484 Der Quilish tritt mit verschiedenen Menschen in verschiedene Beziehungen und multipliziert sich gewissermaßen. 1485 Die lokale Bevölkerung bringt somit bislang stumme Entitäten dazu, sich an dem Konflikt zu beteiligen. 1486 Mit Latour gesprochen erleben wir hier, wie neue Propositionen 1487 an der Tür des Kollektives anklopfen und ein Mitspracherecht verlangen.…”

Section: Heterogenität Der Beteiligten Akteur*innenunclassified

Hybride Rechtssubjektivität

Gutmann¹

2021

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Currently, there is a debate in numerous places around the world whether rights of nature could be an adequate legal tool for dealing with the environmental crises of our time. This paper deals with the world's first constitutional recognition of such rights in the Ecuadorian Constitution of 2008 and takes a theoretical approach based in particular on postcolonial theories. It interprets these new rights as a hybrid right that provides general impulses for thinking about legal subjectivity and points in the direction of a participatory and inclusive model of rights that foregrounds the interdependencies and interrelatedness of legal subjects.

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Theorizing the "Social" in Socio-Hydrology: Incorporating Ethnographic Methods to Characterize Coupled Human-Water Systems in Rural Colombia

Gibson

Smith

Smits

et al. 2022

Preprint

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The burgeoning field of socio-hydrology aims to understand the dynamics of coupled human-water systems in order to inform sustainable water management. However, socio-hydrological methods have traditionally relied on the quantification of qualitative social data, which runs into significant epistemological challenges between the positivist paradigm of hydrology and the interpretivist paradigm of much of social science. This article builds on recent literature that advocates for a pluralistic approach, retaining the methodological and epistemological differences inherent to social sciences and hydrology, and thereby revealing a more complete understanding of situated human-water relationships. In this vein, we propose rapid ethnography as a tool to complement hydrological modeling. We demonstrate the utility of this technique with a case study on hydrological entanglements of rural livelihoods in Andes, Antioquia, Colombia-a region dominated by agriculture, but with the presence of artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM). Our ethnographic study builds on previous hydrological models and quantitative social studies of the region by exploring a myriad of local risk perceptions of hydrological systems, in particular, 1) climate change, 2) water contamination, and 3) hydrological erosion and landslides. We explore how these risk perceptions informed livelihood decisions that paradoxically threatened the very hydrological resources that the livelihoods depended on; yet, this cycle was difficult to interrupt given prevailing economic and political constraints. Ultimately, we seek to advocate for pluralistic approaches in socio-hydrology to help understand complex human-water relationships and ultimately identify critical points of intervention for sustainable water resource management, model-based or otherwise.

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Unearthing Conflict

Cited by 33 publications

References 0 publications

“Countering Documents with Documents”: The Politics of Independent Environmental Auditing in Mexico

“Countering Documents with Documents”: The Politics of Independent Environmental Auditing in Mexico

Hybride Rechtssubjektivität

Theorizing the "Social" in Socio-Hydrology: Incorporating Ethnographic Methods to Characterize Coupled Human-Water Systems in Rural Colombia

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