Abstract: In an era of increased state involve ment in natural resource governance\, members of Bolivia’s “mining cooperat ives” are commonly described as thieves of national wealth. Nevertheless\, these small-scale miners won significant influence in Bolivia’s radically r estructured Plurinational State\, in which the rights of both Indigenous pe oples and Pachamama (Earth Mother) have been constitutionally enshrined sin ce 2009. In this talk\, which draws on my forthcoming book\, cooperative mi ners are unorthodox guides to the tense coexistence of resource nationalism and plurinationalism in Bolivia – a coexistence made possible\, I argue\, by the vertical partition of land from subsoil. Drawing on ethnographic wor k with tin mining cooperatives in the Bolivian highlands\, I trace the hist ory of this partition and explore its contemporary influence. Centering lab or as a site of analysis\, I use the concept of “material history” to theor ize connections between historical materialism and new materialities\, and specifically to examine how the meanings historically sedimented undergroun d shape cooperative miners’ individual bodies and their body politic\, whic h is internally stratified along lines of race and gender. These intimate p rocesses have national ramifications when cooperative miners take to the st reets and run for political offices. Through this work\, I demonstrate not only how cooperative miners help maintain Bolivia’s extractivist economy\, but also how the inseparably meaningful and material qualities of natural r esources shape political subjectivities and political economic processes. < span data-ccp-props="{"134233117":false\,"134233118":false\,"201341983":0\, "335551550":0\,"335551620":0\,"335557856":16777215\,"335559738":0\,"3355597 39":0\,"335559740":279}">
Bio:< /span> Andrea Marston is Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at Rutgers University\, New Brunswick. Her research examines the political economy and cultural politics of natural re sources and energy systems. She is author of Subterranean Matters: Cooperative Mining and Resource Nationalism in Plurinational Bolivia (Duke Universi ty Press\, 2024)\, co-editor for the book series Critical Geographies of Latin America and the Caribbean < /i>(University of Florida Press)\, and the inaug ural recipient of the Margaret FitzSimmons Early Career Award in Political Ecology. Her research has appeared in journals such as Annals of the American Association of Geographers\, Enviro nmental Humanities\, Journal of Peasant Studies\, and Environment and Plann ing A\, among others.
This is hybrid event hosted in Geog room 229 and on zoom.
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