Daviken Studnicki

Daviken Studnicki

Does Extractivism Have a History? Some Genealogies of the Neologism 

Not so long ago, out of Latin America, the term "extractivism" emerged as a keyword for the contemporary resource boom. For the growing number of activists and researchers who've adopted it, extractivism captures the specific constellation of knowledges, discourses, material practices and political commitments that enable the mass commodification of nature. If the word is new the phenomenon is not. The elements that compose contemporary extractivism were produced and joined over centuries. Without pretending to offer a complete synthesis of this history, the presentation explores four of its more important roots: the state's appropriation of natural goods; the epistemological construction of natural resources as objects of commodification and fiscalization; the evolution of hegemonic and counter-hegemonic "moral ecologies" around the extraction and use of minerals, woods, fish; and the peculiar temporalities that have characterized the historical extraction of natural resources. The presentation draws from material gathered for a longue durée political ecology of mining in Mexico, but connects this to the more global historiography on forests, fisheries, fossil fuels, pearls, and other natural goods.

Date: Friday, Mar 27th, 2017 
Time: 12:30 pm 
Location: Peterson Hall, 3460 McTavish Street, H3A 0E6, Room 116

Refreshments will be served