Bulletin of Latin American Research, 2020 DOI:10.1111/blar.

13069

Introduction: Resource
Engagements: Experiencing
Extraction in Latin America
Guest Editor: Amy Penfield and Ainhoa Montoya

AMY PENFIELD
University of Bristol
AINHOA MONTOYA
School of Advanced Study, University of London

Scholarship on resource extraction has seen a surge in recent years following its emer-
gence as a pivotal phenomenon in capitalist economies and state development initiatives.
Much of this literature on extraction, however, tends to explore conflicts and negotia-
tions between transnational corporations, governments and local populations who live
and work in rich-resource territories (see, e.g., Ballard and Banks, 2003; Kirsch, 2006,
2014; Golub, 2014; Welker, 2014). In Latin America in particular, literature on resource
extraction adheres to two main lines of enquiry. The first focuses on the harmful activities
of large corporations, considered the primary actors in the extractive landscape (see, e.g.,
Sawyer, 2004; Shever, 2010), and the second explores resistance by local populations
in response to these activities (see, e.g., De Echave et al., 2009; Bebbington and Jeffrey,
2013; Vasquez, 2014; Li, 2015), with very little literature falling outside this confined
analytical framework (although see Cleary, 1990; Ødegaard and Rivera Andía, 2019,
Part I). Despite the obvious relevance of these approaches to extraction in Latin
America, a focus solely on contestation can risk flattening out the multiple lived
realities on the ground. An increasing number of extractive activities taking place in
Latin America today are defined neither by corporations nor by resistance, but just as
frequently by informal activities, social ties, multiple and conflicting motivations, and
internal conflicts between local-level actors. This special section offers ethnographic
insights into resource extraction by considering the experiences of people in contexts of
extractivism. All articles included in this Special Section emerge from a conference held
at the Institute of Latin American Studies (ILAS), University of London, in May 2016.
The event was entitled “Resource Entanglements: Disparate Narratives on Natural
Resource Extraction in Latin America” and was funded by ILAS.
The articles invite us to consider how different forms of extraction are engaged
with and encountered in diverse ways among contemporary indigenous Latin Ameri-
cans, shedding light on fundamental questions concerning the subtle interplay between
local imaginaries, moral ambiguities, cultural motives and wider economic and political

© 2020 The Authors. Bulletin of Latin American Research © 2020 Society for Latin American Studies.
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 Amy Penfield and Ainhoa Montoya

factors. With a view to offering observations beyond corporations and resistance, the
articles provide narratives of everyday experiences that play out at resource frontiers.
Extraction can take numerous forms beyond large-scale operations that exploit native
peoples and their land for profit (see Southall and Melber, 2009; Kirsch, 2014). While
no doubt this is the case in numerous contexts, accounts of small-scale mining are often
overshadowed by this ‘goliath gaze’; that is, the myopia of homing in on the powerful
leviathan figure of corporations at the expense of recognising other subtle ways that
capitalism can also take hold in ‘resource frontiers’ (see Tsing, 2005). In Latin America,
as has been observed by contributors to this special section, small-scale extraction can
have as severe an impact on social relations and the environment as large-scale opera-
tions (see Asner et al., 2013). While informal mining has been studied in other regions
of the world such as Mongolia and Africa (see, e.g., High, 2013; Hilson, 2016), it has
been underexplored in scholarship on Latin America. This is the case in part because
informal extraction in this region often takes place ‘under the radar’, in inaccessible hin-
terland areas such as the Amazon rainforests. Similar practices in sub-Saharan Africa are
more conspicuous and play a more central role in debates about economic opportunities
amidst cases of acute poverty (Fold, Jønsson and Yankson, 2014).
Alongside informal extractive arrangements, the conflicts that take place in resource
settings are similarly complex and multifarious. All contributions to this special section
unveil a layered approach to discord in relation to resources and their extraction. Rather
than merely outward opposition to foreign activities, mining contestations interlace with
a constellation of internal and external factors, including the allure of wealth within
settings of cosmological beliefs, historical backdrops, social configurations and com-
munity livelihoods. Crucially, the perspective from native peoples in this special section
counterbalances the popular trope of indigenous guardians of a pristine and untouched
environment, who vehemently oppose any form of incursion or extractive venture on
their lands (see McNeish, 2012). Nature is not just presented as an immutable and pre-
served ecosystem, but as facilitator of well-being for extant and future generations, both
as natural provider but also as grantor of wealth more broadly. Contributing authors
thus offer nuanced accounts of the lived realities of resource engagements far removed
from prevailing representations of the corporate leviathan or wholesale resistance to
capitalism that we so often see in academic and non-academic circles alike.

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