ENV1001 Seminar -- Violence and Friction on the Extractive Frontier: Community Responses to Industrial Mining in Ecuador and Perú with Professor Teresa Kramarz and Yojana Miraya Oscco

About the Seminar

We examine the expansion of industrial mining in Latin America and the emergent relationships between indigenous communities, industries, and states. Drawing on Rob Nixon’s conceptualization of violence and Anna Tsing’s concept of friction, we argue that the consolidation of industrial mining can be usefully understood as a form of slow violence that destabilizes local communities while building and normalizing the role of corporate mining interests in social and economic life. Our cases in Ecuador and Peru explore how mining has disrupted customary forms of political organization and sources of livelihoods, forcing communities to reconstitute themselves around evolving relationships with industry and the state. In Ecuador, limestone mining and water extraction for cement processing have displaced Indigenous communities, leading to environmental degradation and local mobilization over land and water. In Peru, the expansion of copper mining operations has undermined the direct democratic participation of Indigenous people. In both cases, indigenous communities have deployed mechanisms to both resist and accommodate this impact. We unpack these dynamics between exogenous shocks from mining incursions and endogenous communities’ responses, ultimately explaining the friction that emerges from Indigenous experiences with slow violence in new and mature extractive frontiers.

About the Speakers

Teresa Kramarz is an Assistant Professor at the School of the Environment in the University of Toronto. She co-directs the Environmental Governance Lab and is the co-convener of the Accountability in Global Environmental Governance Task Force of the Earth System Governance network. Her work focuses on the governance of extractive industries in the renewable energy transition, environmental accountability, and environmental partnerships led by international organizations. She has published three books - “Forgotten Values: The World Bank and Environmental Partnerships” and “Global Environmental Governance and the Accountability Trap” with MIT Press; and “Populist Moments and Extractivist States in Venezuela and Ecuador: The People's Oil?” with Palgrave. Recent articles appear in Environmental Politics, Global Environmental Politics, Energy Research and Social Science, Society and Natural Resources, Environmental Policy and Governance, and Review of Policy Research. She has been working on environmental policy and governance issues for over 25 years starting as an international civil servant in the World Bank and United Nations Development Programme and then as a scholar.Yojana Miraya Oscco is a member of a Quechua community from Peru. She earned a bachelor's degree in geography from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos and completed her master's degree in Environment and Community at Humboldt State University. Currently a Ph.D. student in the department of Political Science. She has taught her native Quechua language at the University of Toronto and co-founded Kuskalla, an international non-profit supporting the revitalization of South American native languages. Yojana is interested in Indigenous Andean Politics, Indigenous Knowledge, Environmental Extractivism, and Political Ecology. 

Yojana Miraya Oscco is a member of a Quechua community from Peru. She earned a bachelor's degree in geography from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos and completed her master's degree in Environment and Community at Humboldt State University. Currently a Ph.D. student in the department of Political Science. She has taught her native Quechua language at the University of Toronto and co-founded Kuskalla, an international non-profit supporting the revitalization of South American native languages. Yojana is interested in Indigenous Andean Politics, Indigenous Knowledge, Environmental Extractivism, and Political Ecology. 

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