In Subterranean Matters, Andrea Marston examines the ongoing history of Bolivian mining cooperatives, an economic formation that has been central to Bolivian politics and to the country's economy. Marston outlines how mining cooperatives occupy a contradictory place in Bolivian politics. They were major backers of left-wing president Evo Morales in 2006 and participated significantly in the crafting of the constitution that would declare Bolivia a plurinational state. At the same time, many Bolivians regard mining cooperatives as thieves because they derive personal profits from the subterranean mineral resources that are the legal inheritance of all Bolivians. Through extensive fieldwork underground in Bolivian cooperative mines, Marston explores how these miners-and the subterranean spaces they occupy-embody the tensions at the heart of Bolivia's plurinational project. Marston shows how persistent commitment to nation and nationalism is a shared feature of left-wing and right-wing politics in Bolivia, illustrating how bodies, identities, and resources fit into this complex political matrix.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
"In this superb study, Andrea Marston follows Bolivia's cooperative miners into the spaces, materials, and sedimented histories of the subterranean to write a brilliant account of the tensions and competing visions of the plurinational state. Stunningly original and brimming with insight, Subterranean Matters challenges us to reconsider how we understand the fraught relation between nature and nation in Latin America. This is material history at its very best." - Bruce Braun, author of (The Intemperate Rainforest: Nature, Culture, and Power on Canada's West Coast) "Drawing on extensive ethnographic research and a deep engagement with scholarship on nationalism, ethnicity, political theory, materiality, and racialization in Bolivia and Latin America more generally, Andrea Marston uses the seemingly anomalous case of cooperative miners to analyze the twenty-first-century Latin American left as well as the rise of the right in Brazil, Colombia, and elsewhere. Clear and readable, this fascinating book contributes to literature on racialization and mestizaje in Latin America from a relational and material perspective." - Elizabeth Ferry, Professor of Anthropology, Brandeis University "Andrea Marston's brilliant Subterranean Matters, the first English language monograph to examine Bolivian mining cooperatives, examines these little studied and poorly understood entities with a compassionate ethnographic sensibility."
- Tom Perreault (Journal of Environmental Studies and Sciences)
Reihe
Sprache
Verlagsort
Zielgruppe
Produkt-Hinweis
Illustrationen
Maße
Höhe: 235 mm
Breite: 157 mm
Dicke: 21 mm
Gewicht
ISBN-13
978-1-4780-2089-9 (9781478020899)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Klassifikation
Andrea Marston is Assistant Professor of Geography at Rutgers University.
List of Abbreviations ix
Preface. Thieves of Patria xi
Acknowledgments xvii
Introduction. Fault Lines: Mining Cooperatives in Plurinational Bolivia 1
1. Subterranean Property: Geology, Theology, and the Law 31
2. Material Fix: Making Mining Cooperatives 59
3. Tangled Veins: Of Tubers and Tin 90
4. Flesh and Ore: Graded and Degraded Matters 123
5. Industrial Ruins: Matters of Time 163
6. Geology of Patria: Patrimony, Patronage, Violence 193
Afterword: Historical Matters and New Eruptions 223
Notes 237
References 255
Index 279
