Land-claims: racialized environmental struggles and emerging political subjectivities in Latin America

• Since the European conquest of Latin America, mechanisms and justifications for unequal access to and control over natural resources have developed in tandem with racial ideologies and institutions. Conceiving race and racism as sociocultural systems that evolve historically with and through the organization of human-environment relations, this chapter considers cases in which racism supported the expropriation of land from subordinate populations for purposes of colonial profit or national/capital development together with recent cases in which resignified racial visions have been mobilized by non-dominant groups in struggles to “reclaim” land. Differential rights to and powers over land, and differential visions for land use, have been key in the construction of diverse racial identities, and in accompanying senses of entitlement, agency and political possibility.

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Social och ekonomisk geografi (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Social and Economic Geography (hsv//eng)

Keyword

race

environment

land

Latin America

Publication and Content Type

kap (subject category)

ref (subject category)