Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard, Juan Javier Rivera Andía, eds. 2019. <em>Indigenous life projects and extractivism. Ethnographies from South America</em>
10.13125/americacritica/3992
Recensione di Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard, Juan Javier Rivera Andía, eds,&nbsp;Indigenous life projects and extractivism. Ethnographies from South America. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, pp. 282.
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Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard, Juan Javier Rivera Andía, eds. 2019. <em>Indigenous life projects and extractivism. Ethnographies from South America</em>
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Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard, Juan Javier Rivera Andía, eds. 2019. <em>Indigenous life projects and extractivism. Ethnographies from South America</em>
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Alcida Rita Ramos. 2019. Book review of “Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard and Juan Javier Rivera Andía,
Indigenous life projects and extractivism: Ethnographies from South America. Cham, Switzerland:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, pp. 282”. América Crítica 3(2): 91-94, ISSN: 2532-6724, DOI:
http://dx.doi.org/10.13125/americacritica/3992.

Abstract
Book review of Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard and Juan Javier Rivera Andía, Indigenous life projects
and extractivism: Ethnographies from South America. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan,
2019, pp. 282.

Resumen
Reseña de Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard and Juan Javier Rivera Andía, Indigenous life projects and extractivism:
Ethnographies from South America. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019, pp. 282.
 Cecilie Vindal Ødegaard and Juan Javier Rivera Andía,
 Indigenous life projects and extractivism: Ethnographies
   from South America. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave
                Macmillan, 2019, pp. 282
                          Alcida Rita Ramos
                        Universidade de Brasília

    This volume makes a significant contribution to the growing literature
on the disastrous impact of extractivism on the life of thousands of peo-
ple in South America, both indigenous and non-indigenous, whether in
the Andes or in the Amazon. Ten chapters distill with a wealth of detail
the recklessness of the industrial world in search of raw materials, dig-
ging deeper and deeper into the entrails of the earth, accelerating entropy
and leaving a trail of chaos, filth, diseases, deprivation, and death. How
many more books like this do experts have to write before the humanity
wakes up to the sobering calamity creeping up under our bewildered
eyes? Is extractivism a new plague spreading over the New World?
Plague it may be, but it is not new.
    Extractivism, a long-familiar term to Spanish (extractivismo) and Por-
tuguese (extrativismo) speakers, first referred to the acts of environmen-
tal vandalism beginning at the dawn of the sixteenth century, such as the
ransack of Brazil wood to dye European cloth. Along the centuries came
the extraction of Amazonian species called drogas do sertão, not to
speak of the gigantic mining operations in the Andes and the genocidal
rubber boom in Amazonia (Taussig 1980, 1987). Could we say that
these earlier forms of extractivism were milder than the contemporary
corporate extraction of oil, minerals, and water, as described in this
book? Or are these new activities simply the logical consequence of ac-
cumulated plunder? Since indigenous peoples survived five centuries of
unbridled bootie, will they successfully outlive the present-day high-tech
devastation? Such are some of the questions this book evokes in the
reader. Big questions!
                                         América Crítica 3(2): 91-94, 2019     92




    The authors describe in detail the processes of encroaching in indige-
nous lands via the extraction of oil, minerals such as gold, and water of-
ten in the form of dams and hydroelectric plants. Land depletion, toxic
leaks, infected waterways result in inevitable health problems in the lo-
cal populations, both human and non-human (Kirsch 2006, 2014). Yet,
many of the authors point out, in most cases, the people who suffer these
abuses are not totally opposed to extractivism. Beyond the obvious dam-
ages, they glimpse certain positive prospects that may benefit them.
What is intolerable to many is the loss of control over the decisions in-
volved in extraction processes, the contempt for their agency as deci-
sion-making actors, and the disdain for their rights duly recognized by
their nations and by international legal organizations.
    Indigenous peoples are never passive receivers of whatever happens
to come upon them. Even in the most unfavorable circumstances, they
have learned from five centuries of enduring the Whiteman’s follies to
turn difficulties into advantages. What the editors state in their introduc-
tion – “how capitalist mechanisms work themselves out and are renego-
tiated in people’s everyday working lives” (2019: 27) – is splendidly
demonstrated in Chapter 5 that deals with the sagacity of oil smugglers.
An echo of these strategies to reverse the perils of conquest appears in
Pacificando o Branco (Albert and Ramos 2002). On the rough days of
the military developmental assault on the Amazon, this book unveiled
ways in which indigenous peoples deploy traditional wisdom to cleanse,
detox Whiteman’s products before consuming them. In so doing, they
reiterate their capacity to control the evil consequences of conquest.
    Another subtheme running through the book is the predicament of
living under the logic of both gift and commodity. The awkward transit
between these two modes of exchange (of goods, postures, beliefs, etc.)
forces people to choose between adhering to market demands and ob-
serving obligations to kith and kin, between succumbing to the allure of
wealth and respecting kinship codes of reciprocity. The outcome of such
schizophrenic scenarios can be downright tragic (Pimenta 2006, Ramos
2014).
93    Alcida Rita Ramos, Book review of Indigenous life projects and extractivism




        This book provokes thoughts about the vagaries of the market. Peaks
     of boom and bust can take a heavy toll on lives and resources. (A telling
     demonstration is dramatized in John Williams’ novel Butcher’s Cross-
     ing). In my view, the focus of analyses about industrial disasters should
     shift from capitalism to the market. Bruce Grant (1995) clearly shows
     that native peoples submitted to forced commodity production suffer so-
     cial and economic devastation as much under communist regimes as in
     so-called capitalist “democracies”.
        My only discomfort with the book is the overuse of ontology, the new
     buzzword in social sciences, particularly in anthropology. Whether ap-
     plicable or not, its repetition through most of the chapters, accompanied
     with a string of set phrases (earth-beings, other-than-human, etc.), has
     the unfortunate effect of diluting the powerful messages contained in the
     description and analysis of particularly severe political situations. The
     notable exception is the outstanding piece by Fabricant and Postero that
     closes the book. In plain language, they shrewdly disclose the contradic-
     tions of the Evo Morales administration. As they do it, they reinforce my
     perception that the state format of government is structurally incompati-
     ble with the way indigenous peoples conduct their lives. It takes much
     more than an indigenous president to indigenize a nation-state.
        This last comment in no way reduces the value of this collection as a
     rich addition to the growing literature on the anthropology of disasters.

        Bibliografía

       Albert, Bruce, Ramos, Alcida Rita, eds. 2002. Pacificando o branco. Cos-
     mologias do contato no Norte-Amazônico. São Paulo: Unesp.
        Grant, Bruce. 1995. In the Soviet house of culture. A century of Perestroi-
     kas. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
        Kirsch, Stuart. 2006. Reverse anthropology. Indigenous analysis of social
     and environmental relations in New Guinea. Stanford: Stanford University
     Press.
        Kirsch, Stuart. 2014. Mining capitalism. The relationship between corpora-
                                             América Crítica 3(2): 91-94, 2019   94




tions and their critics. Berkeley: University of California Press.
   Pimenta, José. 2006. “Reciprocidade, mercado e desigualdade social entre
os Ashaninka do Rio Amônia”. Série Antropologia 392: 2-34.
   Ramos, Alcida Rita. 2014. “Pueblos indígenas y el rechazo al Mercado”.
Revista de Antropología Social 23: 29-53.
   Taussig, Michael. 1980. The devil and commodity fetishism in South Ameri-
ca. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina.
   Taussig, Michael. 1987. Shamanism, colonialism, and the Wild Man. A
study in terror and healing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
