Extractivism and the Defense of Life and Territories: An Account of Latin American Environmental Thought
type: CreativeWork
description: We are living today through an environmental crisis of planetary proportions. Recent decades have seen the proliferation of distinct environmentalisms around the world. In Latin America, a unique environmental vocabulary is being born out of resistance to northern framings of the environmental crisis whose proposed solutions often deepen environmental injustice vis-à-vis the global south.In this dissertation, I provide an account of the key themes in this lively but undertheorized tradition that I call Latin American environmental thought. The conceptual core of Latin American environmental thought, I argue, are the concepts of extractivism, the defense of life and territories, and alternatives. I devote one chapter of the dissertation to each of these concepts, explaining their history and applications. These three concepts together articulate a vision of environmentalism that emphasizes that the climate crisis is not the whole of the environmental crisis, and that we ought to care more about how massive resource extraction projects destroy rural and indigenous communities living more ecologically and embodying alternatives to capitalist globalization. Moreover, Latin American environmental thought emphasizes how racial and gender justice are crucial for environmental justice and for transitioning to an ecological civilization. Because this dissertation is based on two years of different forms of fieldwork in Venezuela, it also presents a model for community-engaged philosophical research. More specifically, it shows ways in which philosophers can be intellectually responsible by testing their understanding of concepts via activist engagements, and it models ways of doing research in the global south that avoid extractive research practices whereby knowledge is gained but little is given back to communities.
abstract: We are living today through an environmental crisis of planetary proportions. Recent decades have seen the proliferation of distinct environmentalisms around the world. In Latin America, a unique environmental vocabulary is being born out of resistance to northern framings of the environmental crisis whose proposed solutions often deepen environmental injustice vis-à-vis the global south.In this dissertation, I provide an account of the key themes in this lively but undertheorized tradition that I call Latin American environmental thought. The conceptual core of Latin American environmental thought, I argue, are the concepts of extractivism, the defense of life and territories, and alternatives. I devote one chapter of the dissertation to each of these concepts, explaining their history and applications. These three concepts together articulate a vision of environmentalism that emphasizes that the climate crisis is not the whole of the environmental crisis, and that we ought to care more about how massive resource extraction projects destroy rural and indigenous communities living more ecologically and embodying alternatives to capitalist globalization. Moreover, Latin American environmental thought emphasizes how racial and gender justice are crucial for environmental justice and for transitioning to an ecological civilization. Because this dissertation is based on two years of different forms of fieldwork in Venezuela, it also presents a model for community-engaged philosophical research. More specifically, it shows ways in which philosophers can be intellectually responsible by testing their understanding of concepts via activist engagements, and it models ways of doing research in the global south that avoid extractive research practices whereby knowledge is gained but little is given back to communities.
author: Monque, Pedro
keywords: Development Studies, Environmental Design, Environmental Studies, Ethics and Political Philosophy, Latin American Languages and Societies, Philosophy, Extractivism, defense of life and territories, socioecological alternatives, decolonial philosophy, Latin American philosophy, environmental philosophy
date published: 2024-06-01T07:00:00Z
date modified: 2026-07-24T01:58:31Z
provider: City University of New York - Graduate Center
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York