Fragmented Forests, Fractured Lives: Ethno‐territorial Struggles and Development in the Pacific Lowlands of Colombia
Year: 2018
Type: article
Abstract: The culturally and ecologically diverse Pacific lowlands of Colombia are both the locus and product of key political economic and cultural political conjunctures. Twenty‐five years after they emerged in their current form, Afro‐Colombian ethnic and territorial struggles have become important icons of resistance to development and struggles for social change. But in Colombia as in other parts of the world, the rapid and violent expansion of capitalist accumulation and state power have had devastating consequences for the region's forests and communities—literally and epistemically fragmenting both. Based on long‐term fieldwork, this paper examines the ongoing and contentious co‐production of the Colombian Pacific region amidst the increasingly violent forces of neoliberal governmentality in the 21 st century. It shows that the Pacific lowlands are an example of “political forests” in the sense that they are a contested site and product of Afro‐Colombian cultural politics and state territorialisation.
Source: Antipode
DOI: 10.1111/anti.12470
Author: Kiran Asher
Institution: University of Massachusetts Amherst
Language: English
Subfield: Sociology and Political Science
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2900225850