Geoforum 43 (2012) 1152–1162

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Geoforum
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum

Underground political ecologies: The second Annual Lecture of the Cultural

and Political Ecology Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers q
Anthony Bebbington ⇑
Graduate School of Geography, Clark University, 950, Main Street, Worcester, MA 01610, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Based on the 2011 Annual Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group Lecture, this paper makes the
Received 24 May 2012 case for a political ecology of the subsoil. Arguing that subsoil resources have received comparatively lit-
Available online 22 September 2012 tle attention within the wider corpus of political ecological writing, the paper explores several ways in
which the extraction of mineral and hydrocarbon resources is constitutive of, and constituted by, wider
Keywords: capitalist political, economic and institutional arrangements. Drawing on material from El Salvador and
Extractive industries the Andean countries, the paper explores the contemporary governance of extractive industries, and
Post-neoliberalism
points to significant convergence among the approaches taken by neoliberal and ostensibly post-neolib-
El Salvador
Andes-Amazon
eral regimes alike. The intersections between the extractive economy, livelihoods and patterns of social
Socio-environmental conflict protest are also explored. Through these examples, the paper also highlights the ways in which ‘‘activist
State and social movements political ecologists’’ play important roles in counter-movements seeking to re-govern the extractive econ-
omy. These countermovements are found in both civil society and different parts of the state. Such activ-
ist political ecologists are central to the broader enterprise of an ‘‘underground political ecology’’ and are
often vital to the success of scholarly interventions in such political ecologies.
Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction striking similarities to the strategies of far more conservative re-

My primary concern in this paper is to discuss themes for a
political ecology of the subsoil.1 I will argue that the subsoil is a sig-
nificant topic for the broader enterprise of political ecology, even if
academic political ecology came to extractive industry relatively late
in the game – certainly later than did networks of activist political
ecologists. Through a discussion of contemporary patterns in the
politics and governance of extractive industry in Latin America, I will
also claim that a political ecology of the subsoil raises issues of
importance that go well beyond the specifics of oil, gas or mineral
extraction. This Latin American discussion will serve as an argument
within an argument, in that it is both a discussion of contemporary
processes in the region as well as a means of illustrating the broader
relevance of the subsoil for political ecology. I will suggest that the
ways in which ‘‘post-neoliberal’’ regimes govern the subsoil show
q that closer interactions with activist political ecologists operating
Editor’s note: this article is a full written version of the second Annual Lecture of
the Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group of the Association of American
Geographers (AAG), which was given by the author at the AAG Meeting in Seattle in
2011. It has been subject to review prior to publication.
⇑ Tel.: +1 508 7937370; fax: +1 508 7938881.
E-mail address: abebbington@clarku.edu
1
I am very grateful to the Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group and its
then President Peter Walker for the invitation to prepare this plenary lecture and then
for the prodding to turn it into text. Thanks also to Gavin Bridge for his understanding
and his comments on an earlier draft, as well as to Jody Emel, Jim Murphy, James
McCarthy, Denise Humphreys Bebbington and two anonymous reviewers for reading,
commenting, challenging and encouraging.
gimes, and in that regard appear considerably less ‘‘progressive’’
than their ‘‘post-neoliberal’’ or ‘‘socialist’’ labels might imply, even
if in other regards they constitute alternative modes of governing
extraction. This, in turn, points to important ways in which resource
extraction becomes causally implicated in the relationships between
polity, economy, nature and society. At the same time, the Latin
American discussion reveals myriad ways in which activist political
ecologists seek to re-govern the extractive economy, pointing to
their own significance in any broader political ecological enterprise.
I am not claiming that the subsoil should be the, or even a, primary
concern of political ecologists (although it will be for a subset of
them). I do, however, want to draw attention to the relative invisibil-
ity of minerals, oil and gas in the canons of political ecology, reflect
on reasons for this invisibility, and suggest that there are important
political, methodological and conceptual issues surrounding the
subsoil that have wider resonance within our field. I will also argue
in various institutional domains would help keep academic enquiry
current and could also contribute to strategic thinking in the world of
activism. It is on this point that I begin the paper.
2. The underground surfaces
Beyond the academic world, there also exist political ecologists
who operate in other institutional realms that can remain easily
hidden from view in academic work. Who and where are these

0016-7185/$ - see front matter Ó 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2012.05.011
 A. Bebbington / Geoforum 43 (2012) 1152–1162
political ecologists, specifically those concerned with the subsoil?
The list is a long one, and includes activist-thinkers associated with
networks that course through organizations such as Mining Watch,
Oil Watch, Global Greengrants Fund, Friends of the Earth Interna-
tional, Oxfam America/International, the Latin American Observa-
tory for Mining Conflicts and, of course, a range of peasant and
indigenous organizations as well as (somewhat more recently) hu-
man rights and environmental justice organizations. Albeit less fre-
quently, these ‘‘underground political ecologists’’ are also to be
found in parts of the State, and rather more often in progressive
religious networks (e.g. the Jesuits). These political ecologists act,
advocate, and organize, generate agendas for alternative political
ecological futures, and produce knowledge on ways in which the
environment is politicized. This knowledge is of everyday engage-
ment and struggle as well as a formalized knowledge captured in
writings, theses and non-English language publications.2
The last decade or so of my own work has been a process of
becoming progressively more deeply embedded in such overlapping
networks, primarily in and related to Latin America. Many parts of
these networks are relatively unaware of each other, but as far as I
can tell they share a great deal as regards their commitments. Flows
of ideas, knowledge, claims, images and people connect them in
ways that suggest some sort of decentralized collectivity that shares
elements and principles of a political and human project combining
critique, resistance and a search for alternative ways of governing
the subsoil. So, while not constituting an identifiable, namable, uni-
tary whole, the many people and organizations of whom I am think-
ing do exist as a loosely networked3 collectivity that has a broadly
shared political ecological project.
Networks such as these have long made my work possible – but
they have also steered it, sometimes by design, sometimes by de-
fault. Some of this steering has taken unexpected paths, one of which
took me to the topic of this paper. From the late 1990s to the mid-
2000s, people with whom I had long collaborated began to feel the
effects of the rapid and aggressive expansion of extractive industries
in Latin America (Bebbington, 2012, 2007; Bebbington and Bury,
2013; de Echave et al., 2009; de Echave, 2008; Acosta et al., 2009;
Scurrah, 2009).4,5 These colleagues, and others within their networks,
began to persuade me of the importance of turning our attention to the
mining, oil and gas sectors (collectively the ‘‘extractive industries’’) as
a problem that was urgent not only in social and environmental terms,
but also analytically, lying as it did at the core of the relationship be-
tween development and democracy in the region.6
While this change began to appear in writings (largely in Span-
ish) from the early 2000s, canonical texts in Anglophone political
ecology largely ‘‘missed the revolution’’ (to play off Orin Starn’s
term: Starn, 1991). The topic of extractive industry is essentially
2
In Latin America, the work of Eduardo Gudynas, Alberto Acosta and Marco Arana
immediately comes to mind in this regard (Gudynas, 2010; Alayza and Gudynas,
2011; Acosta, 2009; Acosta et al., 2009; Arana, 2004, 2002).
3
They are networked in diverse ways, both historical and contemporary. In
addition to existing within intersecting flows of money and information (flows that
hinge around donors, media, blogs, listserves, workshops and conferences), many
people involved in these networks share educational and political party experiences.
4
Factors driving this expansion include increasing global demand (related, inter
alia, to the growth of Brazil, China, Russia and India), related price increases,
technological changes allowing the development of otherwise inaccessible deposits,
policy reforms facilitating investment, and the emergence of new global companies,
also linked to the BRICs, as well as South Korea, Vietnam, etc. (Bridge, 2004;
Bebbington and Bury, 2013).
5
Change was also stirring in Africa. Beyond the already documented, and longer standing
Nigerian case (Watts, 2004, 2001), mining and hydrocarbon codes and/or investment
proposals were changing elsewhere (Campbell, 2003; Hilson and Potter, 2005).
6
Two people in particular were important in this regard, and I owe them immense
debts: Martin Scurrah, at that time Regional Director for Oxfam America’s South
America program; and Denise Humphreys (later Bebbington) who, as Representative
for Peru at the Inter-American Foundation insisted back in 1994 that mining was going
to be the issue that would transform Perú. How right she was (de Echave et al., 2008).
1153
absent from the classic overviews of political ecology (Robbins,
2004; Neumann, 2005; Zimmerer and Bassett, 2003; Forsyth,
2003; Peet and Watts, 1996), although Neumann (2005) does
touch on it through a discussion of environmental security, and
second and spin-off editions do begin to address the topic (Peet
and Watts, 2004; Peet et al., 2010; Robbins, 2012). And if extractive
industry had been deemed generally uninteresting, hardrock min-
ing was even less sexy than oil and gas. Thus, while to express
interest in mining 10 years ago in Peru could easily draw you into
intense and difficult political ecological debate, the same expres-
sion at a meeting of the Association of American Geographers in
the mid-2000s would have invoked a polite smile at best. Stuart
Kirsch (pers. com.) has made a very similar observation regarding
his experiences among anthropologists, even though early classics
in social and cultural anthropology had addressed mining (Nash,
1979; Taussig, 1980) and there has been a healthy group working
on mining in Australasia (Kirsch, 2006, 1993; Coumans, 2011; Bal-
lard and Banks, 2003; Filer, 1991) and on oil elsewhere (e.g. Saw-
yer, 2004). In Geography, somewhat less was going on
notwithstanding the early initiatives of some scholars.7
This has changed dramatically over the last 5 years. In 2007 you
would have been hard pressed to find more than a session or two
addressing extractive industry at the annual conference of the
Association of American Geographers. By 2012, however, there
were whole sequences of sessions on mineral and hydrocarbon
extraction – one with five back-to-back sessions – as well as a
number of individual panels dedicated to the topic. This surge of
interest is impressive, yet it remains the case that this particular
capitalist train has left the station and political ecologists are
somewhat scampering to catch up.8 Most of those doing the chasing
are in the emerging and exciting younger cohorts of our field and for
the most part their writings have grown directly from their doctoral
projects (Himley, 2012; Bury; 2004, 2005; Valdivia, 2008; Horowitz,
2010; Huber, 2009; Emel and Huber, 2008; Moore and Velásquez,
2013; Tschakert, 2009; Hilson, 2010, 2009; Maconachie and Hilson,
2011; Maconachie, 2011; Zalik, 2009; Kaup, 2008; Hindery, 2004;
Hinojosa, 2011; Haarstad, 2012; Damonte, 2007; Humphreys Bebb-
ington and Bebbington, 2010; Budds, 2010; Szablowski, 2007,
2002; Bridge and Frederiksen, 2012; Li, 2009).
This flurry of work is immensely welcome because minerals and
hydrocarbons matter in myriad ways. They are constitutive of the
functioning of capitalism (Huber, 2009) and when they are en-
rolled into social life, a wide range of political imaginaries and rela-
tionships are reworked (Watts, 2004; Perreault, 2008, 2013).
Perhaps in part because of such effects, control over and use of
the subsoil can be deeply conflictive and easily become a particular
site of a sort of Polanyian double movement ‘‘where attempts to
expand the reach and depth of capitalist commodification are
met by vocal (even violent) forms of resistance’’ (Castree, 2007,
p. 27). The sector is also implicated in processes of climate change
(especially for the cases of hydrocarbon extraction and cement
production) along with other critical environmental hazards of
our times. Extractive industry is embedded in a series of global
and life cycles that are of critical significance to planetary well-
being. The carbon cycle is perhaps the most obvious of these, with
all its complications and constructions (Bridge, 2010; Bridge and Le
Billon, 2012; Mannion, 2006), but mineral and hydrological cycles
are also critical (Budds and Hinojosa, 2012). Indeed, in environ-
7
These would include Auty (1993, 2001), Howitt (2001), Emel (Emel, 2002), Angel
(Emel et al., 1995), Bury (2002), Bradshaw (1998), Bridge (2000), Le Billon (2001) and
Watts (2001).
8
Other literatures are perhaps less far behind – in particular those economists and
political scientists debating extraction, the resource curse and conflict (e.g. Michael
Ross, Paul Collier, Joseph Stiglitz and others), and those activist researchers trying to
monitor this most recent round of expansion of extractive industry.
1154 A. Bebbington / Geoforum 43 (2012) 1152–1162
ments where water resources are becoming increasingly stressed,
the emergence of extraction (itself very water hungry) intensifies
such pressures significantly. Meanwhile, extraction has been iden-
tified by activist literature as another factor in land grabs across
the world (Sibaud, 2012).
The political ecology of extraction is also bound up with the
nature and possibilities of democracy, and more generally with
the forms taken by state-society relationships and their particular
intersections with the economy. Some renderings of these relation-
ships – as in some of the resource curse literature for instance – are
particularly cataclysmic, with resource extraction being associated
with authoritarianism, kleptocracy, violence and war. While there
are evident examples of such pathologies, focusing on them is not
the route I take here. I do, though, want to explore how resource
extraction becomes embedded in relationships between economy
and polity in ways that structure the scope for alternatives at both
subnational and national scales.
Following this opening argument about the increasing visibility
of extraction within political ecology, the remainder of the paper is
organized in three main sections. First I draw on work in which we
have been involved over recent years in South and Central America
to reflect on the ways in which the current expansion of natural re-
source extraction is being governed by self-styled post-neoliberal
and more moderately social democratic governments of the region
(ranging from Bolivia to El Salvador). As we and other colleagues
have commented (Bebbington, 2009; Bebbington and Humphreys
Bebbington, 2011; Gudynas, 2010), these resource governance pat-
terns afford much insight into the actual practices and politics of
these governments, into their political and economic viability,
and into the extent to which they might constitute alternatives
in any meaningful sense – qualifying, perhaps, some of the more
optimistic readings of these new regimes (Escobar, 2010). The pur-
pose of discussing these regimes’ approaches to extraction is to
point to some of the macro-political economy questions that a
political ecology of the subsoil might consider. The following sec-
tion shifts scales and explores ways in which this ‘‘new extraction’’
is being experienced and contested. Again this is a summary dis-
cussion, but my goal is to draw attention to the various ways in
which extraction intersects with existing territorial dynamics, live-
lihoods and sociologies of risk and uncertainty, and to explore
ways in which these different types of intersection might be re-
lated to the forms that conflict, mobilization and contestation have
taken (Bebbington et al., 2008).
While there is not the space to make it explicit, the work I re-
port has been conducted in collaboration and communication with
a range of actors who have been involved in such contestation
while operating from diverse institutional positions (both outside
and within the state, and occasionally within companies). There
is no question that our work would not have been possible – or
at least would not have taken the form it took – without these col-
laborations. The concluding section therefore brings the paper back
to the theme of embedded political ecologies of extraction, return-
ing to issues raised in the opening paragraphs.
3. Governing Latin America’s new extraction
Among the most striking features of post-1990 investment in
extractive industry have been the speed with which it has occurred
and the facility with which it has occupied new physical and socio-
political spaces. This has been a remarkably aggressive process of
commodification. We have documented this scale and speed else-
where (Bebbington, 2012; Bebbington and Bury, 2013) so here I
want to focus instead on two other themes: the ways in which this
expansion has caught activists and academics by surprise; and the
ways in which it has elicited a range of counter-movements some
of which offer the prospect of democratizing alternatives while
others have proven to be less inspiring (in ways, I suggest, that
qualify the ‘‘progressive’’ credentials of the post-neoliberal experi-
ment in the region). To do this I will first discuss experiences in
Central America, and then in the Andean region.
3.1. Central American challenges
Between 2005 and 2007, we were involved in a project with the
Ford Foundation and eight Central American and Mexican nongov-
ernmental centres doing research on environment and develop-
ment. As part of this project, researchers from these centres
came to the University of Manchester for a series of seminars
and discussions with faculty and other guests. The issue of extrac-
tive industries was raised at various times over the month. In his
seminar, Gavin Bridge told the participants that from his own work
he had the sense that Central America and Mexico were going to
see significant investments in extractive industry – especially min-
ing – and that this coming wave of investment perhaps ought to
shape these centres’ research and advocacy agendas. Once again,
the topic of mining was greeted with a polite, incredulous smile.
All were convinced that extractive industry investment was at best
a minor issue compared with those of agriculture, social forestry or
ecosystem services on which most of these organizations worked.
The researchers from El Salvador were particularly adamant that
this topic was largely irrelevant for their country.
By 2011 at least four of these centres were dealing with mining,
as both a political and an analytical problem. This was particularly
so in El Salvador. In the six short years since 2005 – when the Sal-
vadoran researchers felt that mining was largely irrelevant to the
issues their NGO should work on – an FMLN government had been
elected9 and the then Director of these researchers’ NGO had been
appointed Minister of Environment.10 One of the most difficult is-
sues in his portfolio was to collaborate with the Ministry of Economy
and Commerce in a process that had to culminate in a new national
policy on mining in a context in which a number of social move-
ments and movement organizations were demanding an outright
ban on mining while parts of the business elite wanted to grow
the sector.11 If by the time of the FMLN’s election in 2008 mining
was a critical political issue, how was it that just a few years earlier
the researchers had deemed it unimportant?
Since policy reforms in the mid-1990s, mineral companies had
begun to conduct geological exploration in El Salvador, operating
under the radar of most of organized civil society and academia.
By 2005, however, the activities of several companies were begin-
ning to generate serious social conflict, but until that point, critical
researchers had scarcely picked up on these changes. By 2008 the
conflict had become so serious that even the pro-business govern-
ment ARENA had put a de facto moratorium on mining activity.
When the FMLN government came to power they inherited this
moratorium, along with much pressure from movements to convert
it into law. However, the FMLN also inherited the fall-out of the mor-
atorium. By 2009 two mining companies whose projects had been
put on hold were using the provisions of the US-Central American
Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA-DR) to sue the government of El Sal-
vador for recovery of all their expenditure to date, for future lost
profits and for losses due to falls in their share value (as well as
9
The FMLN (the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front) fought as a largely
Cuban inspired guerrilla movement during the civil war of the 1980s, and following
peace accords converted to a political party that bridged social democratic and more
radical wings within the Front.
10
Without wishing to belabor the point, he and a number of other advisors who had
migrated into the Ministry from the worlds of NGOs and party based work are the
sorts of activist political ecologist referred to in the introduction.
11
These movement organizations included NGOs such as CEICOM and ADES, the
Working Group (‘‘Mesa’’) Against Mining in El Salvador, and Radio Victoria. For a
doctoral thesis on these movements see Cartagena, 2009.
 A. Bebbington / Geoforum 43 (2012) 1152–1162
the costs of taking legal action). While one of these cases was
dropped in 2011 the other is still being considered by the Interna-
tional Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).12
The FMLN government – with its political ecologist Minister of
Environment – is, then, caught between two pressures. Social
movement organizations, along with parliamentarians and bases
of the FMLN, are not happy that an ostensibly left of center govern-
ment would not ban hard rock mining once and for all. They are
pressuring the government to follow through on what they view
as electoral promises to ban mining. Yet at the same time the gov-
ernment feels the pressure of fiscal imperative. On the one hand,
some officials wonder whether mining might generate tax and roy-
alty revenue for government programmes, while on the other hand
these and others worry that ICSID will find against the government
and impose fines on the scale of a hundred or more millions of dol-
lars – and that this would open the door to a slew of legal suits
from other companies, especially if the Moratorium were con-
verted into law. The government’s response was to buy time and
conduct a Strategic Environment Assessment (SEA) of the mining
sector, with a view to crafting a policy on the basis of that SEA –
the calculation being that if the results of the SEA were to recom-
mend a policy restricting mining, then this technical justification
would offer more legal protection against future lawsuits from
other companies with concessions and exploration projects.13
However this process turns out, it represents a challenge to
both Salvadoran sovereignty and the strength of its democracy. If
the government responds to movement pressures, it risks having
sovereign decisions undermined by ICSID and ending up with a
public budget seriously compromised by the resulting fines. Con-
versely if it lifts the moratorium on mining as a way of avoiding
these fines, it will be viewed as having capitulated to international
capital and dismissed the concerns of the social movement organi-
zations and grassroots groups within the FMLN that constitute an
important political base for the government. In either case the out-
come will threaten the legitimacy of the FMLN government as well
as of the electoral process in securing institutional and policy
change in the face of transnational challenges to sovereignty.
In very many respects, these experiences reflect and constitute
practical nature-society problems that are being worked through
by activists and thinkers who are themselves political ecologists
who move between engagement with conceptual discussions and
the challenges of political practice and policy formulation. They re-
veal how the actual or imagined extraction of the subsoil can elicit
rapid political economy changes in which extractive industries be-
come part of everyday policy and political dilemmas for a range of
actors (see Warnaars, 2013). These experiences also constitute a
stark example of how both domestic and international academic
and research communities were caught completely off-guard by
an on-going political ecological change.14 And finally they reveal
12
The case that was rejected was being brought by the US company Commerce
Group; the case that is still active is being brought by Pacific Rim, a Canadian
company that has used a US registration of its company in order to sue under the
investment protection provisions of CAFTA. On June 1st, 2012 ICSID determined that
Pacific Rim could not proceed with its claim under CAFTA-DR provisions. However, it
also determined that the company could do so under El Salvador’s Foreign Investment
Law.
13
For reasons of transparency I note that I have been involved in this process as
Chair of a Technical Committee of four members that monitored the SEA and reported
directly to the Minister of Economy and Minister of Environment.
14
Of course, it is legitimate to ask whether this should be viewed as a problem.
Were academics to respond too quickly with new ‘‘theory’’ to explain these
phenomena, such rapidly elaborated theory might simply be ‘‘bad’’ theory, inade-
quately crafted, tested or shown to be fit-for-purpose. So perhaps the academic
response should be slow and deliberate rather than fleet-footed. This, however, still
raises the question of who ‘‘ought’’ to be ahead of the curve and operating in fast-
response mode, and what forms the relationships between theory and these ‘‘fast
responders’’ might take. Thanks to Jim Murphy for raising this point.
1155
some of the ways in which expansion of extractive industry can have
significant consequences for state formation and democratic
consolidation.
It is this third theme that I wish to address in the following
section – namely the nature of the relationships between the
extractive economy and political regimes, and the extent to
which the extractive economy is managed differently under
those regimes that consider themselves well to the left of their
predecessors (El Salvador’s FMLN government being one such re-
gime). As I discuss this question, I will refer to these regimes as
‘‘post-neoliberal’’ and ‘‘21st century post-socialist.’’ In using such
terms I am simply deploying labels that a number of these gov-
ernments have applied to themselves – I am not claiming that
the likes of Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Venezuela, El Salvador,
or even Brazil should necessarily be understood as post-neolib-
eral. Indeed, that is the question. Are there ways in which these
regimes are different from their more conservative peers such as
Peru, Colombia, Panama and Guatemala? Do the ways in which
they govern extractive industries throw light on this similarity/
difference? And might extractive industry dynamics be part of
the explanation of any patterns of convergence and divergence
among regimes?
3.2. South American convergences
One of the striking features of the extractive boom in South
America has been the convergence among evidently neoliberal re-
gimes (Peru at least to 2011; Colombia) and assertively post-neo-
liberal ones (Bolivia, Ecuador) in how they approach the
expansion of extractive industry and the governance of the con-
flicts with which it has been associated. The following are unattrib-
uted quotations from actual and former Presidents and Senior
Ministers, and the challenge to the reader is to associate each quo-
tation with one of these four regimes.15
1. ‘‘The ecologists are extortionists. It is not the communities that
are protesting, just a small group of terrorists. People from the
Amazon support us. It’s romantic environmentalists and those
infantile leftists who want to destabilize government.’’
2. ‘‘Enough is enough. These peoples are not monarchy, they are
not first-class citizens. Who are [a small number of] natives
to tell [many millions of citizens] that you have no right to
come here? This is a grave error, and whoever thinks this
way wants to lead us to irrationality and a retrograde
primitivism’’.
3. ‘‘The environmental licence and consultation and participation
have come to constitute an obstacle’’ [to investment in
extraction].
4. ‘‘The great balance that we are seeking . . . is how to maximize
income for the State and at the same time guarantee that the
country has confidence in these investments’’.
Quotations such as these point to a convergence across the re-
gion in which central government offices promote resource extrac-
tion as a means of generating revenue to be used for policies of
social and infrastructural investment. At the same time, these gov-
ernments have sought to ‘‘manage’’ obstacles to the expansion of
such investment – be this through clawing back on rights of prior
consultation or reining in environmental monitoring. As part of
15
Some of the quotations have been slightly edited in order to remove
identifiers. These edits are marked by square parentheses. The speakers are, in
order: Rafael Correa, President of Ecuador (Correa, 2007); Alan García, then
President of Peru (Peru.com, 2009); Carlos Villegas, head of Bolivia’s state
hydrocarbons company, YPFB (La Razón, 2010); Alvaro Uribe, ex-President of
Colombia (RPP, 2011).
1156 A. Bebbington / Geoforum 43 (2012) 1152–1162
this policy, governments ranging from Morales’ ‘‘government of
social movements’’ through to the Uribe government and its
questionable human rights record, have all vilified activists, social
movements and nongovernmental organizations that question the
wisdom of such policies and doubt the positive developmental
effects of promoting the extractive sector. These policy styles
have been centralizing and have prioritized national political
projects over concerns of subnational governments and efforts on
the parts of indigenous groups to extend territorial claims and
autonomies. To go back to the earlier question about possible
consequences for state formation and democratic consolidation,
it may well be that the last few years of extractive industry expan-
sion in the region have favored more populist than participatory
forms of democracy, and an effort to recentralize state authority
following several years of experimentation with decentralized
powers.
The risk of pointing to these convergences through such a trun-
cated discussion is that the argument may convey a form of re-
source based determinism in which economies of extraction are
cast as driving political formations and modes of governing. This
is not my intent. Nor is the idea to argue that natural resources pol-
icy is the same across these four countries. In particular, Ecuador
and Bolivia have shown far more commitment to state ownership
and resource nationalism (though there is also state ownership in
the hydrocarbons sectors in Colombia and Peru). However, there
are convergences in government responses to protest and to hu-
man and indigenous rights in areas where extraction occurs, as
well as in the broader calculations being made regarding the rela-
tionships between extraction and the macro-economy. In this
sense, I suggest that these experiences highlight the value of ana-
lyzing the co-production of ‘‘the economic,’’ ‘‘the political’’ and
‘‘the ecological’’ at national and cross-national comparative scales
as well as at the more localized scales to which political ecology
has generally paid more attention. Such regime level work is ana-
lytically important in and of itself, but it is also critical for any at-
tempt to think through alternatives. As my colleague, Carlos
Monge of Revenue Watch, Peru, argues, any effort that focuses on
local alternatives but is unable to consider how to move to a na-
tional post-extractive economy that is still able to generate the
types of fiscal revenue offered by resource extraction, is dead in
the water.
This reference to Carlos Monge draws attention to a final
point. These processes are being lived and analyzed by activist
political ecologists – some in government, some in civil society
– who are trying to work out how to respond to the rapidly
expanding frontier of extractive industry investment. In the pro-
cess, these ‘‘underground political ecologists’’ have formed a pro-
gressively more networked collective of overlapping communities
who are more or less working together to challenge contemporary
modes of resource governance in the region and to imagine other
options.
4. Experiencing and contesting the new extraction
4.1. Experiencing extraction
The styles of governing extraction discussed above have deliv-
ered much success on their own terms. Interest in exploration
and investment has increased dramatically. Between 2002 and
2009 in Colombia, the area granted to mining licenses increased
from 1.05 million ha to 4.77 million ha (Rudas, 2011). In Peru be-
tween 2004 and 2008 the area of the Amazon basin under hydro-
carbon concessions increased from 14% to 72% (Finer et al., 2008).
By 2011 in Ecuador, everything was in place for the development of
the country’s first ever large scale metal mine, and in Bolivia the
hydrocarbon exploration frontier had expanded into brand new
regions.
In response to this expanding frontier – both of exploration con-
cessions and full-blown operations – one area of work that has ta-
ken off among NGOs and activist researchers seeking to monitor
this process has been the use of GIS and other visualization tech-
niques as instruments of analysis and advocacy (cf. McCusker
and Weiner, 2003). In the Andean region alone, organizations such
as Cooperacción (Perú), the Instituto del Bien Común (Perú), Acción
Ecológica (Ecuador) and Fundación Tierra (Bolivia) have all become
active users of GIS, and the approach has proven highly effective
in what one might call political ecological advocacy. Maps of
concessions and mines have played an important role in conveying
a sense of what is going on, and in placing into public debate the
issue of the need for more land use and environmental planning
of extraction.
One contentious issue surrounding these maps is exactly what
they mean. Critics of concession maps insist that they grossly exag-
gerate the effects of extraction on the landscape, because – they ar-
gue – only a very small proportion of areas granted as concessions
is ever converted into actual mines or wells. The then head of the
government service responsible for concessions in Peru went so far
as to argue that not only was the NGO Cooperacción committing
such acts of exaggeration, but that it was also inciting unrest in
the process because its maps shaded concessions red.16 Such accu-
sations might be absurd – instances of the bizarre that provide for
moments of incredulous humor in otherwise deadly serious circum-
stances – but they do point to a real question: namely, how to inter-
pret maps that show vast swathes of territory under concession for
mining and hydrocarbon exploration (Finer et al., 2008). The conclu-
sion to which we have arrived – in conversation with colleagues in
the region – is that maps of areas that have been granted as conces-
sions are above all maps of uncertainty, risk, anticipation and threat,
both perceived and real. Concessions17 give their holders the right to
explore the subsoil within the boundaries of their concession,
though they do not confer the right to use the surface (this has to
be acquired by the concession holder through market transactions,
negotiation or compulsory purchase). Given that concessions are gi-
ven without prior consultation with residents of the surface,18 it is
often the case that the first that residents know about a concession
affecting the areas in which they live is when strangers appear, seek-
ing to buy land, negotiate rights of way, or begin some basic explo-
ration and survey activity. In this sense, the geography of
concessions is also a geography of unexpected changes in land mar-
kets and in the actors who move across and within particular spaces.
Beyond this – and largely as a result of advocacy, of conflict
elsewhere over extraction and of networking among community
and nongovernmental organizations (underground political ecolo-
gists again) – local populations have become increasingly aware of
the sorts of landscape change, socio-cultural change, water re-
source challenges, potential environmental damage and new eco-
nomic opportunities that a mine or hydrocarbon field might
imply. Consequently, if the exploratory work that the concession
16
Personal communication from Jose de Echave.
17
Concessions are artifacts of systems of resource tenure in the subsoil. In this
region, the subsoil is the property of the nation and held in trust by the state and the
government of the moment. In response to requests, the state allocates concessions to
private actors and state enterprises, directly or through public auction. They are
typically allocated without any form of prior consultation with populations possess-
ing the surface land rights or rights to resources lying above the subsoil.
18
This has become a particularly thorny issue for indigenous-state negotiations in
countries that are signatories of the ILO Convention 169 on indigenous peoples, as
these governments are under obligation to carry out consultations with indigenous
communities before approving projects or investments that will impact their legally
recognized territories. Even in countries such as Ecuador and Bolivia where
governments are ostensibly more sensitive to these issues, consultation processes
are conducted only once concessions or contracts are awarded to companies.
 A. Bebbington / Geoforum 43 (2012) 1152–1162
allows culminates in a discovery of deposits, residents’ visions of
the future change forever. The idea that extraction might be part
of life to come becomes part of an imagination that cannot be
erased.
In these different ways the concession maps new uncertainties
about the future – uncertainties about the possibilities of both dis-
possession and opportunity. There are many legitimate reasons for
these concerns about possible dispossession. By way of example,
consider the north Peruvian Region of Cajamarca, home to Latin
America’s largest goldmine operated by Minera Yanacocha (Bury,
2004, 2005), and the site of a series of additional new and also very
large mining projects. Among some, the sense of the dispossession
that the Yanacocha mine effected is acute. Kamphuis (2012), for in-
stance, has documented how the company acquired 609.44 ha of
land in 1993, paying landowners a total of $30,000 in return. Later
in 1993, Minera Yanacocha mortgaged the same land for $50 mil-
lion, and then for a further $35 million in 1994. While the effects of
the mine on water supply are disputed, it is the case that the town
of Hualguayoc, to the north of the mine, has been without water for
a year (though in this case, activists claim that this is as a result of
the operations of a distinct mine owned by a different company). In
addition to such dispossession of financial value and water is the
risk of other forms of dispossession: of territorial control, of gover-
nance powers for community organizations, of everyday peace and
quiet, and of culturally significant landscapes as mountains are
ground down and new holes appear (Bridge, 2009).
On the other hand, there are also clear reasons to begin to imag-
ine futures of economic bounty once deposits have been discov-
ered. The economies of the city of Cajamarca and of some
communities have been transformed and there are evidently many
more economic opportunities as a consequence of the mine’s pres-
ence and the labor and services that it and its workers demand.
Opportunities can also come in the form of new forms of patronage
and donation. At another planned mine in the region, Anglo-Amer-
ican’s Michiquillay project, the company has established a $200+
million social fund for two (albeit large) communities. More gener-
ally fiscal transfers to Cajamarca based on taxes on mining income
sustain the largest parts of municipal government budgets and
much of the infrastructure investment of the regional government.
Thus for some, the ‘‘uncertainty’’ generated by exploration is that
this could mean significant economic development and poverty
reduction, though on this the evidence is also mixed. While some
studies (Larde et al., 2008) and aggregate data from Bolivia and
Venezuela suggest positive impacts on poverty, econometric and
descriptive analysis in Peru suggests that mining rents have had
little or no significant effect on welfare and poverty (Arellano-Yan-
guas, 2012, 2011; de Echave and Torres, 2005).
Finally, it merits note that whatever the uncertainty about what
sort of development extraction might bring, one thing that is cer-
tain is that at some point in the future the extractive economy will
pass and the question of ‘‘what next?’’ will be palpable. This future
may not be so far around the corner for some territories that have
been caught up in post-1970s extraction and one already begins to
see some of these trying to recast their identities, engage compa-
nies in drawn out legal battles, or simply begin to stagnate eco-
nomically (for instance oil regions in NE Ecuador). Indeed, this
question of ‘‘post-extraction’’ is one that lies wide open in most
analysis of the current boom and its effects.19 Yet in the end, it is
critical.
19
Of course, in some territories the period of ‘‘post’’-extraction may be consistently
delayed as technological and consumption shifts construct new resources as objects
of extraction, or push the potential frontier of economically viable extraction both
further out and deeper down. There is, however, no guarantee that this will occur
(thanks to an anonymous reader for this observation).
1157
4.2. Countering extraction
All this uncertainty is an effect of sustained and massive ‘‘at-
tempts to expand the reach and depth of capitalist commodifica-
tion’’ (Castree, 2007, p. 27) and has been accompanied by
widespread conflict. The Social Conflicts unit of the Human Rights
Ombudsman of Peru consistently reports that around 50% of Peru’s
conflicts are socio-environmental in form and mostly related to
extractive industries. Such conflicts range from those around ef-
forts to establish new mines, wells or pipelines, to others related
to the on-going operations of extractive enterprises, and yet others
over the management and use of tax and royalty revenue gener-
ated by extraction.20 While the figures may not be quite as dramatic
in other countries, the extractive sector has become characterized by
increasing conflictiveness in Bolivia (Humphreys Bebbington and
Bebbington, 2010; Perreault, 2008), Ecuador (Moore and Velásquez,
2012, 2013: Acosta, 2009), El Salvador (Cartagena, 2009), Argentina
(Svampa and Antonelli, 2009), Guatemala (Zarsky and Stanley,
2011), Mexico (Garibay et al., 2011) and elsewhere. This conflict
has generated interesting and important research on the contentious
politics surrounding extraction. However, one lesson from our work
has been that not all counter-movements are contentious. That is, to
focus on subaltern and protest struggles offers only a partial view of
the double movement that has been associated with the expansion
of extraction. In the following paragraphs I outline different domains
in which such countermovement has become apparent to us. This
does not mean that countermovements will be evident in these dif-
ferent domains, but that they can be.
The most obvious domain of countermovement is, of course,
that of contentious politics. Throughout South and Central America
there is ample evidence of this sort of contention, typically involv-
ing indigenous and campesino populations, though in some of the
most significant cases, also involving urban and capitalist farmer
populations concerned about water supply and contamination.21
Such movements appear to be especially concerned about disposses-
sion (of land, water, territory, exchange value) and often make the
case that such dispossession is unacceptable. In an open complaint
to the Morales government of Bolivia, the Council of Guaraní Cap-
taincies of Tarija (Consejo de Capitanías Guaraníes de Tarija) refers
to such loss of territory, autonomy and rights:
‘‘our territories are being permanently affected by natural
resource extraction activities and infrastructure construc-
tion . . . No argument can justify government authorities or rep-
resentatives of state or private companies simply ignoring all
the rights that have been gained by indigenous peoples and that
constitute the essence of the process of change underway in our
country’’ (CCGT, 2010).
Concerns expressed by Afro-descendant movements in Colom-
bia (Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN): Escobar, 2008), or
the indigenous and community based organizations AIDESEP and
CONACAMI in Peru, for instance, are not dissimilar. While the nar-
ratives of territorial autonomy, indigenous autochthony and ‘‘an-
other development’’ of such groups should not automatically be
taken at face value, and nor should their democratizing credentials
be presumed (Watts and McCarthy, 1997), they remain nonethe-
less movements that counter the degrees of commodification and
transformation embodied in the expansion of the extractive
economy.
20
See the website at: http://www.defensoria.gob.pe/conflictos-sociales/.
21
Cases of these would include, for instance: the Quilish and Tambogrande conflicts
in Perú; the conflict in Las Cabañas in El Salvador; the Esquel conflict in Argentina;
and various conflicts in Azuay, Ecuador, in particular that around the Quimsacocha
mine.
1158 A. Bebbington / Geoforum 43 (2012) 1152–1162
Such subaltern underground political ecologists (and indeed,
organizations such as the PCN sometimes invoke political ecol-
ogy)22 have been perhaps the most studied by academic political
ecologists. However, counter-movements are also apparent in the
State, in central government, in local government, in the judiciary
and in the press. In no instance are these dominant (there is a reason
that they are counter) but they do remind us of the possibility that
such processes can emerge from within institutions that can still
too easily be treated monolithically as embodiments of (neoliberal)
hegemony. Let me note a few examples related to the state and
the judiciary.23
Within the ambit of the State, some Human Rights Ombuds-
man’s offices have come to constitute one of the most significant
institutional locations of counter-movement in Latin America.
The Defensoría del Pueblo in Perú and the Procuradoría in El Salva-
dor, for instance, have been especially assertive in addressing is-
sues of dispossession that can occur with the expansion of
extractive industry – especially the dispossession of a range of con-
stitutionally guaranteed civil, environmental and socio-economic
rights. The Defensoría in Peru also played a critical role in moves
to elaborate a Law of Prior Consultation for indigenous peoples
(the law was finally passed in late 2011). Indeed, in many respects
the Defensoría is viewed as an ally by activists even though it dil-
igently retains its autonomy and so at times expresses views that
differ from those of movements (Bebbington et al., 2011; Pegram,
2008).
Ombudsman’s offices are able to play this more assertive, coun-
tering role because they are independent of the Executive Office,
answering instead to Congress – a constitutional location that
gives them a degree of autonomy and an ability to propose (if
not enforce) legal changes. That said, the Ombudsman has been
more assertive in some countries than others, and in given coun-
tries some subnational Ombudsmen’s offices have been more
assertive than others (as is apparent in Bolivia). These patterns
suggest that other factors in addition to constitutional location
are also important. In the Peruvian case, for instance, both leader-
ship and staffing have also been important in determining the ori-
entation of the Defensoría del Pueblo – indeed the office has
attracted a new generation of lawyers with particular commit-
ments to human rights and rule of law.
The scope for counter-movement within Ministries is consider-
ably less than that within the Ombudsman’s offices. One testament
to this might be the relatively short political lives of those political
ecologists who have assumed Ministerial and Vice-Ministerial
positions – though as some of these very people would also note,
lack of experience in public management and political maneuver-
ing were also factors that complicated their tenure.24 However,
the very fact that such actors assumed such positions in the first
place itself reflects attempts to use government as a vehicle of coun-
22
This may be a consequence of their longstanding collaborations with Arturo
Escobar and other scholars.
23
There is not space to discuss the press also, but it does merit a note. While across
the region the press has typically supported the expansion of extractive industry, not
all formal media have been equally convinced. For instance, during 2007 reporting by
the national newspaper La República in Peru played an important role in raising
concerns about the expansion of mining in the northern highlands. Of course, the
boundaries between this press and other counter-movement processes are not clear-
cut. It can be argued that the presence of certain players on the editorial board of the
newspaper helped create space for such reporting and that as such it is better
understood as constituting an outgrowth of other movement processes. However, I
prefer to note it as a different domain, if only to suggest the importance of attending
to it empirically.
24
Examples here would include Alberto Acosta, former Minister of Energy and
Mines in Ecuador, and Jose de Echave and Hugo Cabieses, both former Vice Ministers
of Environment in Peru. Significantly these short lives occurred within governments
declaring an intent to counter the excesses of neoliberalism (Correa’s government in
Ecuador, and Humala’s in Peru).
ter-movement. And in the occasional case, such efforts can become
more long-lasting. The El Salvador experience that I referred to ear-
lier is significant in this regard. Two and half years into the FMLN
government the team in the Ministry of Environment has been
remarkably stable, and continues to pursue a policy which seeks to
strengthen environmental regulation and link it to citizenship rights.
In the specific case of extractive industries, the Ministry has consis-
tently assumed a hard line (though the Ombudsman’s line is harder
still). It has been explicit in exploring the case for a national morato-
rium on mining on the grounds that it might generate unacceptable
levels of environmental and social risk. In the process, members of
the Ministry team have maintained relationships with certain social
movement organizations in ways that are reminiscent of Fox’s
(1996) arguments about the political construction of social capital,
not least because many of these map back onto prior relationships
from the NGO world and the civil war period. Of course, whether
all this will culminate in legislation for an actual moratorium on
mining is another question and will depend on presidential and
prime ministerial negotiations with business elites, as well as on cal-
culations in the Ministry of Finance regarding tax revenue. However,
for our purposes here, this momentum within the Ministry of Envi-
ronment and the relationships on which it depends constitute an
evident attempt to counter the potential commodification of El Sal-
vador’s subsoil in ways that might produce significant new risks and
uncertainties.
Similar initiatives occur in subnational government. Indeed, to
the extent that subnational governments can be more accessible
to civil society organizations through both electoral processes
and professional appointments from the world of local NGOs, then
such counter-initiatives tend to be more frequent at this level of
government. These initiatives have included the strategic use of lo-
cal planning ordinances, the creation of municipal conservation
areas and the establishment of ecological-economic zoning and
land use planning processes – all with a view to governing the
expansion of the extractive frontier so as to reduce adverse envi-
ronmental and social impacts. While the power of such initiatives
is constrained by the limited powers of subnational government,
there are clear instances where this has also slowed down or re-
regulated the expansion of the extractive frontier.25
A fourth domain of countermovement that merits far more
attention is that of the law and the legal profession. Notwithstand-
ing a growing interest in law within political ecology (e.g. McCar-
thy, 2007), there remains very much to be done on the roles that
networks of lawyers and legal practices have played both in fur-
thering reform processes that have facilitated the expansion of
extractive industry and in countering these processes. The Consti-
tutional Court of Colombia offers one of the more striking exam-
ples of the role that the judiciary can play in countering
extraction. In a period of authoritarian neoliberalism under the
Presidency of Alvaro Uribe (2002–2010), central government ac-
tively promoted the large scale, extractive economy – particularly
of mining, hydrocarbons and oil palm. This followed reforms to the
mining code in 2001 that weakened the territorial rights of local
populations, as well as the rights of artisanal miners. The following
period was one in which the area affected by mining licenses in-
creased exponentially (see above) leading to overlaps between
concessions and other titles and rights in land. This process seems
likely to continue under the National Development Plan (2010–
2014) of the current government. This plan identifies mining as
the main ‘‘locomotive’’ of Colombia’s economic growth (there are
25
Examples include: the withdrawal of a mining company from Tambogrande, Peru
(Haarstad and Fløysand, 2007; de Echave et al., 2008); the slow down and redesign of
mining projects in the highlands of Piura (Bebbington et al., 2007; Bebbington, 2012);
the moratorium on mining in Esquel, Argentina; and the use of referenda and other
instruments to raise serious questions about the regulation of mining in Colombia.
 A. Bebbington / Geoforum 43 (2012) 1152–1162
five such locomotives in total), and projects that the sector will ac-
count for 54% of all private investment and 41% of all public invest-
ment over the period.
The irony (or contradiction) of Colombia is that all this has hap-
pened at the same time as ‘‘Colombia boasts one of the most pro-
gressive frameworks for ethnic rights protection in the world’’ (NSI,
2011) enshrined in instruments such as the Political Constitution
of 1991, Ley 70 of 1993 (which recognizes the rights and ancestral
territories of Afrodescendent populations, along with their prior
rights to consultation and to exploration and exploitation of min-
eral resources on their territories) and Decree 1320 of 1998 which
establishes regulations for prior consultation. Meanwhile a 2010
Constitutional Court ruling (T-1045A) established a requirement
for free, prior and informed consent for mining projects on territo-
ries of Afrodescendent populations, as well as for plans to protect
the basic rights of these populations in the event that projects pro-
ceeded. Also in 2010, reforms to the mining code added high alti-
tude grasslands (paramos) and RAMSAR sites as strategic areas to
be protected by the state against destruction by mining projects.
The far reaching – and in some cases constitutional – nature of
these provisions means that they cannot simply be viewed as a
green-washing of national policy. Instead they seem to reflect the
sorts of regulatory double movements that one might expect if
one accepts the Polanyian argument. Understanding their final ef-
fects as well as how they take form within the relatively hidden
and opaque worlds of courts, lawyers’ networks and the judiciary
are wide open fields of enquiry.
4.3. Negotiating extraction
Of course, many encounters with extraction will not fall easily
into those of opponents and proponents, of those who see risks
and those who see opportunities. Many processes will likely in-
volve the sorts of negotiated bricolage that have been so skillfully
revealed by, for instance, earlier work on peasant politics and tech-
nical knowledge (Batterbury, 2001; Long and Long, 1992). Once
again there is not the space here to elaborate on this, except to note
two examples of the sorts of process that might merit attention –
one at the local scale, the other national.
At the local and subnational scale, it is already clear from expe-
riences in North America and Australasia that some indigenous and
local populations have concluded that engaging with extractive
industry can serve as a means of furthering other projects – in par-
ticular ones of local economic regeneration, the recovery of territo-
rial control and the reconstitution of identities. One gets a similar
sense in Latin America that some indigenous populations are
engaging with extraction not only for the very pragmatic reason
of extracting benefits, but also in order to see how far the extrac-
tive economy can be used as a means of consolidating territories.
Given the sorts of Faustian pact that might be at play in such nego-
tiations, as well as the huge asymmetries of power that are in-
volved, the jury is still very much out on how far these might be
viable strategies. Nonetheless, these experiences and correlates of
them among other subnational populations and governments mer-
it careful analysis. Such analysis will illuminate not only political
strategy but also the sorts of relationship between resource extrac-
tion and political forms that might come to be.
At another scale the emerging movement in Latin America
around transitions beyond extraction also merits attention. Here
the narrative is at a wholly different scale, and the goal is to imag-
ine and bring into being post-extractive economies that no longer
depend so heavily on bringing minerals and hydrocarbons to the
surface (Alayza and Gudynas, 2011). Once again, though, these
transitions will also have to involve a carefully managed engage-
ment with extraction – because the transition will not occur from
one day to the next and early phases of any transition will be based
1159
on the extractive economy for reasons of fiscal revenue. In this area
the field is once again wide open, not only for studying the political
processes around post-extraction but also for producing bodies of
analysis and knowledge that can become part of these very same
processes, providing ingredients for the construction of imaginar-
ies that stand some chance of not being ‘‘dead in the water.’’
5. Conclusions: underground, networked regional political
ecologies
The significance of the underground should not be underesti-
mated – and arguably cannot be overestimated. This is not to argue
that the underground should be the only, or even the primary, to-
pic of inquiry for political ecology. It is to suggest that it is a topic
whose importance has not been reflected in the balance of political
ecological writing to date. Control of the subsoil has been a vehicle
for the accrual of immense power, both domestically and interna-
tionally. This power is most obviously embodied in those corpora-
tions that dominate mineral and energy economies, but just as
importantly affects, and is constitutive of, many domains of trans-
national, national and everyday political economic and social life.
Perhaps this very omnipresence has made the centrality of the sub-
soil too big to get a handle on, or too mundane to recognize. What-
ever the case, its significance would seem not so dissimilar from
that of food or forests, to which many more pages of political eco-
logical treatise have been dedicated. I close this essay suggesting
that similar effort could very fruitfully be dedicated to the subsoil,
both to analyze how it is used and brought into social life, and to
explore alternatives to the dominant ways in which it has been
governed. Any such effort must also build off (and not merely rein-
vent) insights that have already been garnered in other subfields as
well as in other disciplines beyond geography and anthropology
(the two that I have cited most in this discussion).
If it is correct to suggest that there is significant convergence
among post-neoliberal and neoliberal regimes in their commit-
ment to expanding extractive industry and their willingness to
compromise territorial, rights based and environmental claims in
the process, then the implication is that, for all their resource
nationalism and invocations of state ownership, the approaches
being pursued by governments in Bolivia or Ecuador (and certainly
by those of Peru or Colombia) fall far short of the principles under-
lying the types of alternative invoked by authors such as Escobar
(2008, 2010). Of course, much of the reason for this might be that
such post-neoliberal experiments are by definition pursued on a
terrain that has already been deeply neoliberalized, and that this
limits governments’ room for manoeuvre (Kaup, 2010). To the ex-
tent that prior dependence on extractive industry has path depen-
dent effects on future options (Auty, 2001), such limits are all the
greater. Whatever the case, one implication is that the relation-
ships between contemporary resource based models of economic
and social development, state formation and forms of democracy
is a topic that is still open for plenty of critical and creative
analysis.
However, while the temptation might be to be pessimistic, the
sorts of counter-movement that I have briefly outlined point to the
many brave actors who are in the business of building elements of
alternative approaches to extraction that might leave more space
for rights and environmental integrity – whether those elements
are a land use plan, a decision on Constitutional principles, or a
moral sanctioning of a government department whose decisions
have contravened civil rights (Bebbington and Bury, 2009). Fur-
thermore, they are doing so in ways that are more or less net-
worked and, in a loose sense, collective. Put another way, these
processes of construction are a form of networked, underground
regional political ecology of which academic political ecology is
1160 A. Bebbington / Geoforum 43 (2012) 1152–1162
consciously or unconsciously a part (but just one part) (cf. Roche-
leau and Roth, 2007; Birkenholtz, 2011).26 This way of viewing the
embeddedness of academic political ecology might lead one to
tweak the notion of regional political ecology to refer not just to
the political ecology of regions (Walker, 2003; Black, 1990) but also
to the conduct and pursuit of political ecologies within regions and
that might ultimately help constitute regions – a pursuit in which
academic political ecologists are one among a number of players.
Such a framing can also help highlight other issues that may
have relevance beyond any political ecology of the subsoil. First,
for many academic political ecologists, being part of these political
ecologies within regions is a critical condition of possibility for our
own scholarly work. Embedding research might often be less of a
choice than a necessity, and can become even more so for work
on issues that are particularly contentious or opaque. Second,
when the academic political ecologist is concerned with processes
that are unfolding on a massive and multi-locational scale (such as
the associated large-scale infrastructural transformation of Latin
America that has accompanied the rise of extraction), to get a han-
dle on such processes makes a link to far wider networks essen-
tial.27 Third, if the academic political ecologist is embedded within
such networks, collaborating with ‘‘underground’’ political ecolo-
gists, the question of how to analyze these networks and how to talk
about the mutually constitutive nature of these networks and the re-
searcher’s own work is not an easy one to answer (cf. Riles, 2001). It
also becomes challenging to think through how to conduct critique
of processes of which one is a part, that involve colleagues and that
also involve some degree of risk for those colleagues. Fourth, this risk
– which in the case of work on extractives can range from personal
and physical risk to legal risk of being sued by powerful interests –
raises other challenges for the academic political ecologist. In partic-
ular, how might such risk be interpreted and assumed, and in what
ways can academic work either increase or divert risks borne by
other ‘‘underground’’ political ecologists in those networks. Fifth, gi-
ven that, at least for the case of extractive industries, these networks
have a relatively poor record of prediction and have sometimes been
caught flat-footed by developments within the industry (recall my
Salvadoran colleagues), how far can the political ecologist engage
in the business of prediction? While such prediction may not be of
the econometric or modeling kind (though conceivably could be),
is there scope for prediction based on operating within certain social
processes as a result of our research and our own professional
location?
The theme of last year’s CAPE plenary paper (Blaikie, 2012) was
whether political ecology is/could be/should be ‘‘useful.’’ While
this is an important question, it is not the one that motivates me
to raise the sorts of questions that I have just outlined. Instead I
want to draw attention to the extent to which academic political
ecologists are always working through, and are always part of,
broader political ecological networks that bind together activism,
technocracy and scholarly endeavor. Recognizing and making this
explicit (while also protecting identities) reveals the fuller scope
of the political ecological enterprise as an exercise in the co-pro-
duction of different and ultimately counter-hegemonic socio-nat-
ures: ‘‘alternatives’’. If contemporary capitalism is made possible
by the bundling of the subsoil with specific networks of power,
knowledge and technology, then any alternative way of governing
the subsoil and its relationships to life above the surface, will be
26
Some authors make this embedding of their own work in these regional networks
more explicit than do others. Two colleagues who are especially explicit in this regard
are Escobar, 2008; Kirsch, 2006.
27
This is a variant on the multi-sited ethnographies of world systems that various
scholars have called for – in this rendering, the individual academic political ecologist
works only at one or two of these sites, and collaborates with wider networks that
reach across many more sites and that are not confined only to scholars.
brought into being through different networks of power, knowl-
edge and technology. That is the project of a political ecology of
the underground and it is one whose challenge far exceeds the pos-
sibilities of academic political ecologists working alone.
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