
Reimagining the Gran Chaco
Identities, Politics, and the Environment in South America
University Press of Florida
Published on 30. October 2021
Book
Hardback
360 pages
978-1-68340-211-4 (ISBN)
Description
This volume traces the socioeconomic and environmental changes taking place in the Gran Chaco, a vast and richly biodiverse ecoregion at the intersection of Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, and Paraguay. Representing a wide range of contemporary anthropological scholarship that has not been available in English until now, Reimagining the Gran Chaco illuminates how the region's many indigenous groups are negotiating these transformations in their own terms.
The essays in this volume explore how the region has become a complex arena of political, cultural, and economic contestation between actors that include the state, environmental and NGOs, and private businesses and how local actors are reconfiguring their subjectivities and political agency in response. With its multinational perspective, and its examination of major themes including missionization, millenarian movements, the Chaco war, industrial enclaves, extractivism, political mobilization, and the struggle for rights, this volume brings greater visibility to an underrepresented, complex region.
The essays in this volume explore how the region has become a complex arena of political, cultural, and economic contestation between actors that include the state, environmental and NGOs, and private businesses and how local actors are reconfiguring their subjectivities and political agency in response. With its multinational perspective, and its examination of major themes including missionization, millenarian movements, the Chaco war, industrial enclaves, extractivism, political mobilization, and the struggle for rights, this volume brings greater visibility to an underrepresented, complex region.
Reviews / Votes
"This book is the first of its kind and fills a very important gap in the anthropology and ethnohistory of the Gran Chaco, especially of the last thirty years. The editors have assembled an outstanding collection of articles by the top and well-recognized anthropologists working on the Gran Chaco."- Rene Harder Horst, author of A History of Indigenous Latin America: Aymara to Zapatistas;"A much-needed collection of ethnographies written by experienced field workers, useful for understanding what is happening right now with Indigenous peoples in the region. This book presents little-known facts from the viewpoint of localized researchers, unveiling the effects of ethnicity, culture, Christian conversion, national identity, exploitation, and dispossession."- Marcela Mendoza, author of Juegos de combate entre varones de grupos etnograficos cazadores-recolectores.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Florida
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paper over boards
Illustrations
16 black & white illustrations, 1 table
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 26 mm
Weight
735 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-68340-211-4 (9781683402114)
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 Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

Silvia Hirsch | Paola Canova | Mercedes Biocca
Reimagining the Gran Chaco
Identities, Politics, and the Environment in South America
E-Book
10/2021
1st Edition
University of Florida Press
€34.49
Available for download
Persons
Silvia Hirsch is professor and codirector of the Center for the Study of Anthropology at Escuela Interdisciplinaria de Altos Estudios Sociales, Universidad Nacional de San Martin in Argentina. Hirsch is the author of El pueblo Tapiete de Argentina: historia y cultura.
Paola Canova, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin, is the author of Frontier Intimacies: Ayoreo Women and the Sexual Economy of the Paraguayan Chaco.
Mercedes Biocca, researcher at Escuela Interdisciplinaria de Altos Estudios Sociales, Universidad Nacional de San Martin in Argentina.
Paola Canova, associate professor of anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin, is the author of Frontier Intimacies: Ayoreo Women and the Sexual Economy of the Paraguayan Chaco.
Mercedes Biocca, researcher at Escuela Interdisciplinaria de Altos Estudios Sociales, Universidad Nacional de San Martin in Argentina.