This Element analyses the political dynamics of neo-extractivism in Latin America. It discusses the critical concepts of neo-extractivism and the commodity consensus and the various phases of socio-environmental conflict, proposing an eco-territorial approach that uncovers the escalation of extractive violence. It also presents horizontal concepts and debates theories that explore the language of Latin American socio-environmental movements, such as Buen Vivir and Derechos de la Naturaleza. In concluding, it proposes an explanation for the end of the progressive era, analyzing its ambiguities and limitations in the dawn of a new political cycle marked by the strengthening of the political rights.

This cutting-edge book presents a broad picture of global capitalism and extractivism in contemporary Latin America. Leading scholars examine the cultural patterns involving gender, ethnicity, and class that lie behind protests in opposition to extractivist projects and the contrast in responses from state actors to those movements.

This book examines the role of external powers in Latin America in the 21st century. Non-traditional partners have significantly increased their political and economic engagement with the continent. Five key questions arise: why has this surge taken place; when has it happened; in which regions and sectors is it mostly felt; what is the Latin American perspective; and what are the actual results? The book analyses 16 case studies: the United States, the European Union, China, Russia, Japan, Canada, India, Turkey, Iran, Israel, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, the ASEAN countries, South Africa and Australia. The spectrum of existing explanations in the literature spans from neo-extractivism to South-South cooperation. This volume places them in context and proposes a more multifaceted approach, stressing a combination of systemic factors and internal dynamics both in Latin America and in the external partner countries. Geopolitics still matters and so do nation states, their interests and leaders. Ultimately, this surge in engagement has largely reproduced past patterns. Are new partners that different from the old ones?

Latin America has experienced a profound transformation in the first two decades of the 21st century: it has been fully incorporated into the global economy, while excluding regions and populations devalued by the logic of capitalism. Technological modernization has gone hand-in-hand with the reshaping of old identities and the emergence of new ones. The transformation of Latin America has been shaped by social movements and political conflicts. The neoliberal model that dominated the first stage of the transformation induced widespread inequality and poverty, and triggered social explosions that led to its own collapse. A new model, neo-developmentalism, emerged from these crises as national populist movements were elected to government in several countries. The more the state intervened in the economy, the more it became vulnerable to corruption, until the rampant criminal economy came to penetrate state institutions. Upper middle classes defending their privileges and citizens indignant because of corruption of the political elites revolted against the new regimes, undermining the model of neo-developmentalism. In the midst of political disaffection and public despair, new social movements, women, youth, indigenous people, workers, peasants, opened up avenues of hope against the background of darkness invading the continent. This book, written by two leading scholars of Latin America, provides a comprehensive and up-do-date account of the new Latin America that is in the process of taking shape today. It will be an indispensable text for students and scholars in Latin American Studies, sociology, politics and media and communication studies, and anyone interested in Latin America today.

The large-scale extraction of natural resources for sale in capitalist markets is not a new phenomenon, but in recent years global demand for resources has increased, leading to greater attention to the role of resource extraction in the development of the exporting countries. The term neoextractivism was coined to refer to the complex of state-private sector policies intended to utilize the income from natural resources sales for development objectives and for improving the lives of a country's citizens. However, this book argues that neoextractivism is merely another conduit for capitalist development, reinforcing the position of elites, with few benefits for working people. With particular reference to the role of neoextractivism within Latin America and the Caribbean, using Guyana as a case study, the book aims to provide readers with the tools they need to critically analyze neoextractivism as a development model, identifying alternative paths for improving the human condition. This book will be of interest to academics and students in the fields of international development, political economy, sociology, and globalization, as well as to policymakers and political activists engaged in social movements in the natural resources sector.

This book contributes to the current revival of dependency approaches for the analysis of global capitalism. Reflecting on contemporary uses of the “Dependency Research Program” (DRP) and a refined analytical toolkit, it makes two distinctive contributions to this revival: the analysis of new “situations of dependency”, and the understanding of the “mechanisms of dependency”. The individual chapters draw from a wide range of cases and data from Latin America and Europe and imbricate concepts and ideas from the DRP with those of other approaches, from post-Keynesian economics to structural economics, institutional economics, regulation theory, comparative capitalisms, business politics, economic geography and critical finance studies, providing a rich array of possibilities for virtuous inter-disciplinary cross-fertilization. This volume is a valuable contribution for those interested in understanding how global capitalism works in Latin America, Europe and beyond.

NAMED A BEST BOOK OF 2020 BY THE NEW YORK TIMES, THE GUARDIAN, THE BROOKLYN RAIL, THE GLOBE AND MAIL, POP MATTERS, COMICS BEAT, AND PUBLISHERS WEEKLY From the “heir to R. Crumb and Art Spiegelman” (Economist), a masterful work of comics journalism about indigenous North America, resource extraction, and our debt to the natural world The Dene have lived in the vast Mackenzie River Valley since time immemorial, by their account. To the Dene, the land owns them, not the other way around, and it is central to their livelihood and very way of being. But the subarctic Canadian Northwest Territories are home to valuable resources, including oil, gas, and diamonds. With mining came jobs and investment, but also road-building, pipelines, and toxic waste, which scarred the landscape, and alcohol, drugs, and debt, which deformed a way of life. In Paying the Land, Joe Sacco travels the frozen North to reveal a people in conflict over the costs and benefits of development. The mining boom is only the latest assault on indigenous culture: Sacco recounts the shattering impact of a residential school system that aimed to “remove the Indian from the child”; the destructive process that drove the Dene from the bush into settlements and turned them into wage laborers; the government land claims stacked against the Dene Nation; and their uphill efforts to revive a wounded culture. Against a vast and gorgeous landscape that dwarfs all human scale, Paying the Land lends an ear to trappers and chiefs, activists and priests, to tell a sweeping story about money, dependency, loss, and culture—recounted in stunning visual detail by one of the greatest cartoonists alive.

This issue of International Development Policy looks at recent paradigmatic innovations and development trajectories in Latin America, focusing on the Andean region. It aims to enrich our understanding of recent development debates and processes in Latin America, and what the rest of the world can learn from them.

The Latin American Ecocultural Reader is a comprehensive anthology of literary and cultural texts about the natural world. The selections, drawn from throughout the Spanish-speaking countries and Brazil, span from the early colonial period to the present. Editors Jennifer French and Gisela Heffes present work by canonical figures, including José Martí, Bartolomé de las Casas, Rubén Darío, and Alfonsina Storni, in the context of our current state of environmental crisis, prompting new interpretations of their celebrated writings. They also present contemporary work that illuminates the marginalized environmental cultures of women, indigenous, and Afro-Latin American populations. Each selection is introduced with a short essay on the author and the salience of their work; the selections are arranged into eight parts, each of which begins with an introductory essay that speaks to the political, economic, and environmental history of the time and provides interpretative cues for the selections that follow. The editors also include a general introduction with a concise overview of the field of ecocriticism as it has developed since the 1990s. They argue that various strands of environmental thought—recognizable today as extractivism, eco-feminism, Amerindian ontologies, and so forth—can be traced back through the centuries to the earliest colonial period, when Europeans first described the Americas as an edenic “New World” and appropriated the bodies of enslaved Indians and Africans to exploit its natural bounty.