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- Convenor:
-
Katy Jenkins
(Northumbria University)
- Location:
- Malet 353
- Start time:
- 4 April, 2014 at
Time zone: Europe/London
- Session slots:
- 2
Short Abstract:
This panel explores how gender intersects with the expansion of extractive industries in Latin America. Papers aim to make visible women's experiences, and focus on how gender roles, gender relations, and gendered spaces and subjectivities shape, and are shaped by, extractive industries.
Long Abstract:
This panel aims to critically explore how gender intersects with diverse issues related to the expansion of extractive industries in Latin America. Whilst, as Bebbington observes, "…the rise of extractive industry visits tremendous change and dislocation on territories and countries within which it occurs […] [and is associated with] unprecedented transformations of landscape, labour and social relations" (Bebbington 2012: 5), the experiences of women in relation to this unfolding scenario remain largely invisible, with little critical analysis of the ways in which gender roles, gender relations, and gendered spaces and subjectivities shape, and are shaped by, this complex set of processes.
The extractive industries have, in a variety of contexts, been shown not to be gender neutral, but to impact disproportionately on women, particularly poor and rural women (e.g. Oxfam Australia 2009, Ahmad & Lahiri-Dutt 2006, Macdonald & Rowland 2002). However, literature engaging with these issues deals principally with the context of Australasia and Asia and, with a couple of exceptions (Rondón 2009, Li 2009), there has been little empirical focus on the Latin American context, despite the rapid expansion of extractive activities in the region.
Papers are therefore invited on topics including, but not limited to, the gendered impacts of extractive industries on communities and individuals; women as workers, particularly in relation to artisanal and informal mining; gendered violence and exploitation in affected communities; women as anti-mining activists; the intersections of gender and indigeneity in relation to extractive industries; and women's human rights and the extractives sector.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
This paper takes into account global debates surrounding women’s role in development and examines how women's involvement in anti-mining activism impacts on traditional social structures that perpetuate gender inequalities.
Paper long abstract:
In Latin America, the anti-mining movement has gained a reputation for building upon existing gender inequalities, relegating women's concerns and discouraging them from gaining political recognition.
This paper study the experiences of a handful of women activists across rural areas in Peru that are using their community activism to contest gender inequalities. Their history, objectives and activities are discussed in order to gain some understanding of the possibilities and problems concerning their struggle to achieve recognition not only as local leaders but of the anti-mining movement.
Using the women's own perspective as a starting point, the researcher documents both subtle improvements in gender norms as well as the processes through which the activists transform them into catalysts for changes in gender norms. The paper suggests an important link between women's anti-mining activism and a recognition of women as social actors.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the way in which activism is incorporated into the everyday lives and practices of rural women anti-mining activists in the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Andes.
Paper long abstract:
This paper explores the way in which activism is incorporated into the everyday lives and practices of rural women in the Ecuadorian and Peruvian Andes. Drawing on research with women anti-mining activists in Piura (Peru) and Cuenca (Ecuador), the paper emphasises that resistance is relatively rarely concerned with large scale protests, transnational activism, and the spectacular, but rather depends on daily resistance and resilience in, often fractured, local communities. I explore how rural women make extraordinary circumstances, including facing lawsuits and accusations of terrorism, part of their everyday lives, and how their resistance is enacted through strategies of staying put and carrying on, drawing on emblematic narratives of tradition, ancestry and customary practices to challenge notions of progress and development.
Paper short abstract:
In Peru mining has long been promoted as a vector of modernization for the Andean highlands. This paradigm of modernity is increasingly questioned by protest movements opposing new mining projects. This paper will focus on the role of women as subjects and objects of such a contested modernity.
Paper long abstract:
During the last twenty years, extractive activities in Peru have been viewed by the national government as the only viable road to development in the Andes. This paradigm of modernity is increasingly questioned by protest movements opposing the implementation of new mining projects. Although the issue of gender is rarely addressed directly in such conflicts, women play an increasingly important role, both as beneficiaries of company social programs and as protagonists of the protest movements. In both cases, women's social role and physical bodies are central to the collective construction of one model of modernity, as well as to a critique of the other. This paper will focus on women as subjects and objects of a contested modernity. It shall present results from ethnographic research carried out in the region of Cajamarca, one of the areas of heavy mining investment and the site of intense social conflict since 2011. An overview of the paradigms of modernity will be presented in terms of the role that each of these models assigns to women, especially in the realm of maternity. The experiences of women in this contested terrain, as well as their mediation and resistance to the constraints imposed on them by existing models, shall permit us to explore the differences and intersections of the two discourses of modernity. At the same time, we shall focus on the creative agency with which women operate within each one of these discourses, as active subjects in the definition and implementation of their rights.
Paper short abstract:
“Nothing about us, without us" that was the principle that were endorsed by Indigenous Women in the last World Conference of Indigenous Women, celebrated in Peru this year.
Paper long abstract:
"Nothing about us, without us" that was the principle that were endorsed by Indigenous Women in the last World Conference of Indigenous Women, celebrated in Peru this year. Indigenous Women have been presented to international organizations as a subaltern social group which has constructed a transnational identity. In this paper I would like to show the singularities of Indigenous women´s voices of Abya Yala. They have been raised as a movement of resistance against an invasion of their autochthonous territory by extractive industries.
The methodology will consist of a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of their formal statements as Indigenous Women of Abya Yala at international organizations as well as their own international spaces: Indigenous Women´s network. From both places they claim their own position as active voices inside (their) communities and at transnational spaces.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines mobilisations against the Conga project in the Peruvian northern department of Cajamarca since 2011 and places a special focus on the role of women in defence of water, environment and life.
Paper long abstract:
In Peru mining has been one of the engines behind the country's economic growth since the 1990s. Simultaneously, it has also become one of the sectors that have generated the most conflict as numerous local communities have started protesting against mineral extraction across the country. The Yanacocha Mining Company (MYSA) has become an outstanding example of this 'new mining boom' in Peru, starting its mining activities in 1992 in the northern department of Cajamarca. In 2004, there was a massive mobilisation against one of the company's projects in the Quilish mountain (Cerro Quilish) and consequently the extraction plan came to a halt. After 2011 the local population mobilised against the MYSA's new gold mining project, Conga. The project plans to exploit two mineral deposits in three districts of the department: Huasmín, Sorochuco (the province of Celendín) and La Encañada (the province of Cajamarca). One of the main concerns for the local population is that the Conga project will wreck an irrevocable havoc on the region's environment, particularly the quality and quantity of water available. Over nearly two years, opponents of the project have mobilised in defence of water, environment and life. The conflict has gained a lot of national and international attention and solidarity, particularly in relation to the government's authoritarian and violent response to the local population. This paper examines mobilisations against the Conga project and places a particular focus on the role of women in defence of water.