TY - JOUR
T1 - Hydrocarbons, popular protest and national imaginaries
T2 - Ecuador and Bolivia in comparative context
AU - Perreault, Tom
AU - Valdivia, Gabriela
PY - 2010/9/1
Y1 - 2010/9/1
N2 - This paper examines contemporary struggles over hydrocarbon governance in Ecuador and Bolivia. Our comparative analysis illustrates the ways that petro-capitalism, nationalist ideologies, popular movements and place conjoin in the governance of oil and natural gas. In the case of Ecuador, state employees drew on their labor relations and political training to oppose the government's efforts to privatize the state oil company. In Bolivia, urban popular movements opposed the privatization of the hydrocarbons industry and its domination by foreign firms. In both cases, hydrocarbons struggles involved the production of imaginative geographies of the nation and it hydrocarbon resources, which in turn drew on historical memories of nationhood. Whereas neoliberal political and economic restructuring sought to re-organize national hydrocarbons companies, redraw concessions, and draft new resource extraction laws, hydrocarbon movements aimed to counter these processes by re-centering hydrocarbon governance within a populist vision of the nation-state. In contrast to analyses of resource conflict in the environmental security and resource curse literatures, the cases of Ecuador and Bolivia demonstrate that such struggles cannot be reduced to models of opportunity structure, war profiteering, or resource scarcity (or abundance). Rather, these cases show that political economy and cultural politics are inseparable in the context of resource conflicts, which involve struggles over the meanings of development, citizenship and the nation itself.
AB - This paper examines contemporary struggles over hydrocarbon governance in Ecuador and Bolivia. Our comparative analysis illustrates the ways that petro-capitalism, nationalist ideologies, popular movements and place conjoin in the governance of oil and natural gas. In the case of Ecuador, state employees drew on their labor relations and political training to oppose the government's efforts to privatize the state oil company. In Bolivia, urban popular movements opposed the privatization of the hydrocarbons industry and its domination by foreign firms. In both cases, hydrocarbons struggles involved the production of imaginative geographies of the nation and it hydrocarbon resources, which in turn drew on historical memories of nationhood. Whereas neoliberal political and economic restructuring sought to re-organize national hydrocarbons companies, redraw concessions, and draft new resource extraction laws, hydrocarbon movements aimed to counter these processes by re-centering hydrocarbon governance within a populist vision of the nation-state. In contrast to analyses of resource conflict in the environmental security and resource curse literatures, the cases of Ecuador and Bolivia demonstrate that such struggles cannot be reduced to models of opportunity structure, war profiteering, or resource scarcity (or abundance). Rather, these cases show that political economy and cultural politics are inseparable in the context of resource conflicts, which involve struggles over the meanings of development, citizenship and the nation itself.
KW - Bolivia
KW - Ecuador
KW - Hydrocarbons
KW - Natural gas
KW - Oil
KW - Resource conflict
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=77954246859&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=77954246859&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.geoforum.2010.04.004
DO - 10.1016/j.geoforum.2010.04.004
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:77954246859
VL - 41
SP - 689
EP - 699
JO - Geoforum
JF - Geoforum
SN - 0016-7185
IS - 5
ER -