Dispossession by Accumulation? Mining,Water and the Nature of Enclosure on the Bolivian Altiplano

Abstract: This paper examines processes of primitive accumulation and livelihood dispossession on the Bolivian Altiplano. Through empirical examination of the social and environmental effects of mining waste, the paper demonstrates that indigenous campesino community members are experiencing livelihood dispossession by way of three interrelated forms of accumulation: accumulation of toxic sediments on agricultural fields; accumulation of water and water rights by mining firms; and accumulation of territory by mining operations. In the case under examination, full proletarianization is not taking place, and processes of dispossession are not a “fix” for an overaccumulation crisis. The paper argues for greater attention to the contingent role of nature's materiality in processes of dispossession and accumulation.     

Nature,Capital and Neighborhoods: “Dispossession without Accumulation”?

Abstract: The ongoing economic crisis, which originated in the USA and has since spread rapidly to capital markets worldwide, is massive, complex, and many times contradictory. One could say the same for responses to the crisis as governments, firms and multi‐national institutions struggle to grasp the full magnitude of the event. This article interrogates the key commodities involved—land, labor and money—and the always‐uneasy relations between spaces of social reproduction and capital. Such ambivalence is critical to understanding how new economic realities are formed in light of retreating neoliberalism as markets become destabilized. The analysis provided suggests the commodities involved in the housing crisis are the basis for a countermovement against dispossession.     

Kenya's new indigenes: negotiating local identities in a global context

ABSTRACT. This article examines the proliferation of communities that self‐identify as indigenous peoples by looking at the Ogiek, Sengwer, Endorois and Pokot of western Kenya. It shows how community leaders have self‐consciously employed a global discourse of indigeneity – and associated ideas of territorial association, marginalisation and especial vulnerability – to strengthen moral and legal claims to land and resources, to access new domains of action and cultivate new channels of patronage. The analysis also highlights how this process, together with similar developments across Africa, Asia and the Middle East, has prompted a re‐evaluation and stretching of this global signifier at the supra‐state level. Finally, the article reveals how the emergence of a new global space has provided new opportunities and strong incentives to renegotiate local “nationalisms” in a struggle for ownership and control of communal terroir, while factionalism has fed into, supported and fundamentally altered supra‐national definitions.     

Extinction is the Dream of Modern Powers: Bearing Witness to the Return to Life of the Sinixt Peoples?

The Arrow Lakes Band was the only form of legal recognition ever made available to the Sinixt nation by Canada before they were declared extinct. The Oatscott reserve and the state were cartographies that both summoned and willed away the Sinixt. I attempt a “politics of witnessing” of recent Sinixt activities as they push back against these colonial enframings and displacements. I then contextualize biopower within settler society to chart the production of the state through a cultural economy of racialization and erasure, and through a clearing of the land based on more explicit imaginative geographies. The declaration of the extinction of the Sinixt illustrates Indian reserves less as a disciplinary and more a sovereign technology. And yet it is quintessentially modern owing to the absence of instrumental violence. Finally, the limitations of witnessing and the space Indigenous peoples make for alliances are examined.     

Negotiating Neoliberal Empowerment: Aboriginal People,Educational Restructuring,and Academic Labour in the North of British Columbia,Canada

Aboriginal peoples in Canada are gaining influence in post‐secondary education through Aboriginal‐directed programs and policies in non‐Aboriginal institutions. However, these gains have occurred alongside, and in some cases through, neoliberal reforms to higher education. This article explores the political consequences of the neoliberal institutionalization of First Nations empowerment for public sector unions and workers. We examine a case where the indigenization of a community college in British Columbia was embedded in neoliberal reforms that ran counter to the interests of academic instructors. Although many union members supported indigenization, many also possessed a deep ambivalence about the change. Neoliberal indigenization increased work intensity, decreased worker autonomy and promoted an educational philosophy that prioritized labour market needs over liberal arts. This example demonstrates how the integration of Aboriginal aspirations into neoliberal processes of reform works to rationalize public sector restructuring, constricting labour agency and the possibilities for alliances between labour and Aboriginal peoples.