Women, nature, and development in sites of Ecuador's petroleum circuit

Abstract

This article argues that the contradictory character of Ecuador's current development project is made evident through a focus on energy resource management from a feminist ecological perspective. The hydrocarbon exploitation fundamental to these projects transforms women's roles in social reproduction and production, their relationship with nature, and their dependence on state‐institutionalized energy regimes. We examine changes in women's territorially based work of care at sites in Ecuador's petroleum circuit. An ethnographic focus on the transformation of women's daily lives at sites of petroleum exploration, exploitation, and processing in Ecuador reveals an often overlooked dimension of the socioenvironmental conflicts produced by the intensification of national economic insertion into the global energy market. This article thus examines the intersection of state development policies and the gendered construction of subjects of development. The exploitation of natural resources transforms the meanings and values of nature and development, of women's work of care, and of the participation of these in different energy regimes.

Naming matters: Inheritance, land, and reproductive labor in rural Tanzania

“…These scholars argue that capitalism demands and is subsidized by unpaid reproductive labor, while undermining the material and social basis of social reproduction (Federici 2004; Katz 2001; Razavi 2009). In recent years, economic and ecological crises have prompted a resurgence of work on social reproduction (Bhattacharya 2017; Cielo, Coba, and Vallejo 2016; Cousins et al. 2018; Fraser 2016; Naidu and Ossome 2016).…”

Indigenous Women's Activism, Ecofeminism, and Extractivism: Partial Connections in the Ecuadorian Amazon

“…With the 1970s oil boom, the northern Amazon provided almost half the state budget, yet those communities remained excluded from access to basic infrastructure, education, and health. Northern Amazonian communities were often displaced to more remote areas because of the immigration of low-skill laborers to work in the oil fields (Cielo, Coba, and Vallejo 2016, 127). Taking a “pastoral role,” oil companies compensated for the state's relative absence in the area by assuming social responsibilities in order to avoid conflicts with local groups (Sawyer 2004, 9).…”

“…The partial cooperation with environmental organizations has also facilitated indigenous peoples’ adoption or intensification of certain narratives about their activism in the language of conservationist discourses in order to be heard. For example, some Amazonian women embrace the image of themselves as “guardians of their territory.” In the visual testimonials that Ecuadorian photographer Felipe Jácome captures in “ Amazonas: Guardians of Life,” Amazonian activists see themselves as the ones who “take care” and “defend our land, our jungle, the rivers, the mountains and the trees that house the spirits of the jungle.” 12 Given that Amazonian women are often responsible for reproduction and care work involving their relations with nature, this self-understanding is not only the product of fictional self-representation and has resonated in the international environmental media covering their mobilization (see Cielo, Coba, and Vallejo 2016). 13…”

“…The Citizens’ Revolution left-wing government advanced this expansion, initiated in 2006, reversing the Ecuadorian state's absence from the Amazon and dramatically changing the government's extractive discourse and intervention strategies. For example, the Amazon is now strategically and explicitly integrated into the government's developmental plans and antipoverty discourse (Cielo, Coba, and Vallejo 2016, 125).…”

Development, Citizenship, and Everyday Appropriations of Buen Vivir: Ecuadorian Engagement with the Changing Rhetoric of Improvement

“…Some men began to migrate to look for jobs in regional urban centres or in oil exploration in other parts of the Amazon. Women witnessed profound transformations in their everyday lives and subsistence strategies (Cielo and Vega, ; Cielo, Coba and Vallejo ). For example, they began to trade fish, meat, favours, and goodwill for the gasoline they needed to power canoes back and forth to farms in order to gather food from lands that were quickly disappearing into the jungle.…”