Conservation in the Pluriverse: Anti-capitalist struggle, knowledge from resistance and the ‘repoliticisation of nature’ in the TIPNIS, Bolivia

Abstract

Latin American indigenous territories (both rural and urban) are experiencing a resurgence of academic interest, partly for their potential to 'repoliticise nature' in response to the 'ruinations' of colonialism and extractive capitalism (de la Cadena and Blaser, 2018; de Sousa Santos, 2014). As these debates on territory develop in social science, I draw from de Sousa Santos’ work on the epistemologies of the south (2018), which explores the knowledges created in resistance, with political ecology, which approaches nature as produced through politics, history and culture, to offer an empirical reading of the relationships between place, knowledge and the ‘repoliticisation of nature’ in the TIPNIS, Bolivia. Specifically, examining how protected area conservation is being rearticulated within agendas for territorial autonomy during a conflict over extractive infrastructure. In doing so, I reveal how conservation has informed the repoliticisation of nature in the TIPNIS, opening up trajectories for recognising and supporting plurality, difference and autonomy as they are permeated and created within dominant political economies and ecologies.