Recorded 15/03/21
LMN was delighted to be joined by guest speaker Thea Riofrancos for the launch of the first Resisting Mining Book Club! Thea spoke about her recently published book Resource Radicals: From Petro-Nationalism to Post-Extractivism in Ecuador (Duke University Press, 2020) and took questions from the crowd. Huge thanks to all who attended!
About the book
RESOURCE RADICALS explores the politics of extraction, energy, and infrastructure in order to understand how resource dependency becomes a dilemma for leftist governments and social movements alike. Thea Riofrancos offers an ethnographic account of extraction politics in Ecuador, where grassroots activists engaged with a leftist government under President Rafael Correa (2007-2017) to shape the political and economic consequences of resource extraction. She draws a distinction between two leftist positions on extraction: radical resource nationalism, which demands collective ownership of oil and minerals, and anti-extractivism, which rejects extraction entirely. For Riofrancos, Ecuador’s commodity-dependent economy and history of decolonial and indigenous activism make this country a particularly interesting case for understanding the state’s role in development, democracy, and the ecological foundations of global capitalism. RESOURCE RADICALS demonstrates that the Ecuadorian left’s shift from calls to nationalize resources to a radical anti-extractivist politics provides a new model for grassroots responses to environmental crisis.
RESOURCE RADICALS is of interest to scholars working in Latin American studies, political science, political theory, anthropology, and environmental studies, as well as to those interested in activism and radical politics.