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Indigenous Cosmopolitics in the Andes: Conceptual Reflections Beyond "Politics"
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TLDR
The notion of politics as usual, that is, an arena populated by rational human beings disputing the power to represent others vis-a-vis the state as discussed by the authors, is insufficient, even an inadequate notion, to think the challenge that indigenous politics represents.Abstract:
In Latin America indigenous politics has been branded as “ethnic politics.” Its activism is interpreted as a quest to make cultural rights prevail. Yet, what if “culture” is insufficient, even an inadequate notion, to think the challenge that indigenous politics represents? Drawing inspiration from recent political events in Peru—and to a lesser extent in Ecuador and Bolivia—where the indigenous–popular movement has conjured sentient entities (mountains, water, and soil—what we call “nature”) into the public political arena, the argument in this essay is threefold. First, indigeneity, as a historical formation, exceeds the notion of politics as usual, that is, an arena populated by rational human beings disputing the power to represent others vis-a-vis the state. Second, indigeneity's current political emergence—in oppositional antimining movements in Peru and Ecuador, but also in celebratory events in Bolivia—challenges the separation of nature and culture that underpins the prevalent notion of politics and its according social contract. Third, beyond “ethnic politics” current indigenous movements, propose a different political practice, plural not because of its enactment by bodies marked by gender, race, ethnicity or sexuality (as multiculturalism would have it), but because they conjure nonhumans as actors in the political arena.read more
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Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy
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Journal ArticleDOI
Ontological Conflicts and the Stories of Peoples in Spite of Europe Toward a Conversation on Political Ontology
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Ethnography in Late Industrialism
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Degrowth, postdevelopment, and transitions: a preliminary conversation
Arturo Escobar,Arturo Escobar +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, a conversation between degrowth and post-development is initiated by placing them within the larger field of discourses for ecological and civilizational transitions and by bridging proposals emerging from the North with those from the Global South.
References
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Book
We Have Never Been Modern
TL;DR: This article argued that we are modern as long as we split our political process in two - between politics proper, and science and technology, which allowed the formidable expansion of the Western empires.
Book
Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection
TL;DR: A history of weediness can be found in this paper, where the authors discuss the frontiers of capitalism, the economy of appearances, knowledge, and freedom in Borneo.
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Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature
TL;DR: In this paper, the Past Is the Contested Zone is defined as the "contested reading" of Narrative Natures, i.e., the past is the 'contested zone'.
Book
Politics of Nature: How to Bring the Sciences into Democracy
Bruno Latour,Catherine Porter +1 more
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that political ecology has to let go of nature first, get out of the cave and return to civil peace, and that the notion of fact and value is a limitation of the power of the Bicameral Collective.
Journal ArticleDOI
Marxism and Literature
TL;DR: In fact, it might not appear that the consideration of so-called "creative literature" has very much importance for Marxism as mentioned in this paper, but it has always had a great deal to say about literature and to its practitioners.