Format/Structure

Panel session format, with speakers chosen based on submission and acceptance of papers.

Long Abstract

This panel calls attention to the rich, diverse, and insurgent traditions of political ecology (PE) in, of, and from Latin America. This large and diverse region has its own deep histories of PE thought and action rooted in the knowledges of Amerindians, Afro-descendant, and other territorialized communities, decolonial and feminist praxis, and place-based movements for autonomy and justice. Such histories challenge PE’s epistemic boundaries and invite us to reimagine its future.

Across Latin America, communities, movements, and scholars have long been resisting dispossession, extractivism, and state violence while cultivating other ways of knowing, living, and relating to others, including the territory. This panel centers those struggles and the stories they generate, not as case studies for theory, but as theory in motion.

Agribusiness, mining companies, large-scale infrastructure projects, financial capital, and state institutions are responsible for inflicting myriad forms of destruction upon Latin American ecosystems and societies. Given the incompatibility of conventional "development" models with the full preservation of life, a critical reflection on alternatives to "development" is essential. Consequently, we seek papers that examine the agents and mechanisms of the destruction of Latin America and subsequent resistance. Thus, we invite papers that will look to alternatives, including initiatives that valorise community knowledge, values and practices, drawing inspiration from concepts such as agroecology, "buen vivir", ecological debt and others.

This panel is a call to disrupt, decolonize, and dream otherwise. We welcome contributions in English, Spanish, Portuguese, and other languages of Latin America from scholars, activists, artists, and movement collectives. Our goal is to build a multilingual, translocal space of exchange that bridges worlds without flattening difference, and insists on the transformative power of PE as both critique and action.

This Panel has 11 pending paper proposals.
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