Angus Lyall

Oil extraction is a useful optic for thinking and writing about the future of sustainable resource use. While concerns over the burdens of oil extraction tend to be of a planetary scale (e.g. discussions around fossil-fuel addiction, energy security, and climate change), in this chapter we zoom in to the case of the Ecuadorian Amazon, where indigenous peoples have raised profound questions about oil extraction practices and outcomes. Amazonian peoples’ refusal to oil extraction, in particular, has received significant global attention and is considered emblematic of indigenous peoples’ sustainability thinking. At the same time, this common narrative about indigenous political action hides the complex ways that Amazonian peoples relate to oil extraction. We focus on the case of Playas del Cuyabeno (Playas hereafter), a Kichwa community located in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon to illustrate how “sustainability” is not an abstract concept that can be applied worldwide seamlessly, but that thinking and acting sustainably emerges from locally-rooted visions of the past, present and future. In this chapter, we introduce the dominant ways in which sustainability and oil extraction are currently discussed in Ecuador, and how debates around oil extraction tend to reproduce a particular way of thinking about sustainability. Next, we lay out our conceptual framework for examining sustainability in Playas. Then, we briefly trace the experiences that shaped how Playas residents see themselves in relation to oil, first resisting and then acquiescing to oil extraction within their territory. In the subsequent section, we examine the conditions and subjectivities through which people of Playas came to position themselves not only as supporters of oil extraction, but as potential oil producers themselves, despite popular narratives that associate indigenous peoples with anti-oil politics. We interrogate concepts of sustainability by tracing the conditions that made it possible for Playas’ population to imagine an indigenous oil company as a vehicle of sustainability, noting that sustainable development planning is not the exclusive practice of elite state, non-governmental, and multilateral institutions. We highlight the intersectional dimensions of the decisions of indigenous leaders to embrace oil extraction in the name of social and environmental sustainability. There is no single relation that explains positioning vis-à-vis oil in local contexts, but multiple relations and complex histories that construct ways of seeing and acting.

An exploration of radical megaprojects in the Ecuadorian Amazon, considering the fate of utopian fantasies under conditions of global capitalism From 2007 to 2017, the “Citizens’ Revolution” launched an ambitious series of post-neoliberal megaprojects in the remote Amazonian region of Ecuador, including an interoceanic transport corridor, a world-leading biotechnology university, and a planned network of two hundred “Millennium Cities.” The aim was to liberate the nation from its ecologically catastrophic dependence on Amazonian oil reserves, while transforming its jungle region from a wild neoliberal frontier into a brave new world of “twenty-first-century socialism.” This book documents the heroic scale of this endeavor, the surreal extent of its failure, and the paradoxical process through which it ended up reinforcing the economic model that it had been designed to overcome. It explores the phantasmatic and absurd dimensions of the transformation of social reality under conditions of global capitalism, deconstructing the utopian fantasies of the state, and drawing attention to the eruption of insurgent utopias staged by those with nothing left to lose.

In cities, agroecological food consumption is often identified as an exclusive, middle-class practice. In this article, we examine changes in agroecological food circuits in urban Ecuador, amid COVID-19 breakdowns in conventional food systems. Through interviews with farmers, government officials, and NGO workers in 2020 and 2021, our research identifies three sets of experiences with distinct implications for agroecological transitions. First, some agroecological circuits could no longer function due to regulations on food circulation that favored the corporate food sector. Second, some circuits temporarily expanded to reach more urban middle-class consumers, using online platforms and government infrastructures. Third, urban collectives and neighborhood organizations re-appropriated urban spaces - from cultural centers to city streets - to facilitate the circulation of agroecological foods in low-income sectors. We highlight the spatial and social 're-localization' practices of these urban groups that challenge the hegemony of conventional food circuits, as they drive agroecological food consumption beyond the middle-class.

Las comunidades amazónicas adoptan diversas posiciones políticas en relación con el extractivismo. En tales posiciones influyen las diversas historias previas de encuentro y desencuentro con el Estado, las empresas extractivas y la sociedad mestiza. Sin embargo, gran parte de las investigaciones sobre el extractivismo sufren de presentismo. En este artículo examino la multitemporalidad de conflictos y negociaciones en territorios con actividades extractivas, a través de un estudio de caso etnográfico en el norte de Ecuador. Exploro el levantamiento de una comunidad indígena contra una compañía petrolera, durante el cual los miembros de la comunidad invocaron distintos momentos históricos: la época del caucho, la expansión de la educación institucionalizada en la región y experiencias más recientes de migración urbana. Estos múltiples momentos de la longue durée de la colonización en la Amazonía norte dieron forma a las aspiraciones de esta comunidad para resistir y luego negociar con la petrolera y el Estado, y obtener así un proyecto de desarrollo urbanístico como forma de compensación. Para comprender cómo el pasado influye en conflictos y negociaciones sobre el extractivismo, se requiere prestar atención a esos momentos históricos que dan sentido al presente.

ABSTRACT Forced resettlement, central to state-led development throughout the twentieth century, still paves the way for agroindustrial, hydroelectric, urban, and other forms of development in much of the global South today. In response to pressures from social movements challenging human displacement, states, firms, and multinational institutions increasingly seek the consent of impacted communities, often offering monetary compensation and resettlement, along with development assistance. Some states obtain consent by offering resettlements with urban infrastructures and public services. In Ecuador, the state has planned 200 urban-like resettlements called “Millennium Cities” for communities on the Amazonian oil and mining frontiers. Although resettlement in this context transforms human–environment relations and generates new social ills by isolating residents from food supplies and market networks, many communities do consent to resettlement. In this paper, I call attention to voluntary rural–urban resettlement in land grab governance and I explore why communities might consent to their own displacement. This paper suggests the need to account for the material and social conditions that structure consent.

El canton de Cayambe, Ecuador, ha experimentado muchos cambios en sus configuraciones economicas y culturales durante los ultimos cuarenta anos. Se ha convertido de una zona de alta concentracion de haciendas semi-feudales a una de alta produccion fordista o post-fordista de rosas para la exportacion. Asimismo, se ha convertido de una zona relativamente aislada a una caracterizada por grandes flujos de personas e informacion. Esta investigacion pretende comprender el rol que juegan las memorias de tales cambios bruscos en cuanto a como los floricultores, los trabajadores de las floricolas y los pequenos productores del canton comprenden este campo de fuerzas; como comprenden sus derechos, sus obligaciones mutuas y la funcion social de la tierra, entre otros temas. Nos preguntamos, ?para que les sirven sus memorias de cambio a los cayambenos para concebir el campo actual de fuerzas e imaginar las posibilidades del cambio en el futuro? Consideramos los significados teoricos de esta pr...

La adopción de estándares de comercio justo se concibe como una forma de garantizar una producción–en países menos desarrollados– en condiciones sociales y ambientales justas, a la vez que se permite a los productores entrar en mercados diferenciados –por lo general en los países del Norte. Sin embargo, para comprender la real naturaleza de las medidas que estos certicados de producción promueven, es necesario profundizar en las relaciones de poder de los actores envueltos. Para el caso del Ecuador, las empresas orícolas certicadas con el sello Fairtrade International (FLO) desarrollan sus prácticas en entornos a menudo de corte paternalista que, lejos de empoderar a la mano de obra, re-posicionan las jerarquías del mundo laboral y contribuyen a interiorizar en los trabajadores las exigencias de losmercados.Fairtrade International (FLO) applies requirements or “standards” for certification in agroindustries in order to channel resources to workers, improve their conditions, and “emp...

Latin America is the second largest oil-producing region in the world, following the Middle East. Major producers, such as Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela, export to other Latin American countries, in addition to the Caribbean, North America, Europe, and, increasingly, Asia. The US, the world’s largest oil consumer, is the largest purchaser of Latin American oil; approximately 26% of US crude oil imports come from Latin America. Conversely, about 56% of US exports of refined fuels are shipped to Latin America. These trade networks and patterns offer some perspective on Latin America’s global oil connectivity, but say little about how its fl ows become entangled with (and often deepen) existing structures of economic dependence, colonialism, and geopolitical power in the region (e.g., Bebbington and Bury, 2013 ; Watts, 2016 ). A closer look at how oil fi rms, states, financiers, environmentalists, and communities govern the distribution of economic benefits and socio-environmental harms allows us to examine how “oil complexes” ( Watts, 2004 ) of resource and population governance take shape in Latin America. Our analysis is necessarily partial – the region is vast and oil politics continue to unfold under diverse politico-economic and geological conditions of possibility. Notwithstanding local specificities, the 20th and 21st centuries suggest some regional generalities in how oil-flow and oil-money link fi rms, states, and civil society through development imaginaries and initiatives. We start by discussing the consolidation of 20th-century petro-politics in oil-producing countries, tracing the connections between global oil economics (e.g., market prices, investment cycles, and production trends), resource nationalizations, and neoliberal and “post-neoliberal” oil governance. Then, we examine petro-politics in the spaces of oil logistics: oil frontiers. We end with a look at the enduring habits of oil rule and the near future of oil politics in the region.

In petro-states, the governance of flows of oil and oil money is vital to state legitimacy (e.g., regulations, contracts with companies, social compensation in sites of oil extraction). This article explores how contemporary oil price volatility shapes oil governance and the terms of petro-state legitimacy in Ecuador. In recent years, a technocratic, populist regime, led by President Rafael Correa, promised to return national oil
resources to “the people” and inaugurate a “postneoliberal” era of sovereign, oil-driven development. The performance of this promise, through augmented public spending, was contingent on international oil prices. We track the emergence of what we call a speculative petro-state, in which state actors claimed to successfully gamble on volatile markets on behalf of the nation, as an emergent strategy for cultivating popular legitimacy. Such claims took the form of petro-populist discourses and practices. First, the Correa administration characterized new contractual relations with oil companies and capital as evidence of Correa’s leadership in complex oil markets, seeking political legitimacy for the state through perceptions of Correa’s personal capacity to manage market risk. Second, as prices surged, the Correa administration channeled rents into building spectacular public works or “petro-populist landscapes,” as material verification of Correa’s petro-leadership in volatile markets. We track how market risk management became one key organizing factor of populist rule in Ecuador and we analyze how this case illuminates relations between
populist politics and economic spheres.

In oil-dependent nations, the governance of national oil reserves and
the redistribution of oil rents are often widely-perceived as moral
endeavours, necessary for achieving a minimum just distribution of
resources. Struggles over oil policies and rents among powerful oil
industry actors in private and public companies, public institutions,
banks and unions are embedded in this moral economy. Thus, in
moments of political-economic crisis, oil elites often attempt to
persuade the public to perceive them as principled oil managers and
their elite competitors as morally corrupt in order to legitimate new
or renewed claims on oil. In Ecuador, I explore such a moral economy
of oil. First, I detail the corruption narratives that oil elites have used
in distinct historical conjunctures to shape moral perceptions of the
actors who manage oil reserves and rents. Second, I detail a
conjuncture in the early years of the Rafael Correa regime, when
indigenous groups in the northern Amazon tried to leverage ancestral
claims to oil-rich territories to form an indigenous-owned oil company
called Alian Petrol. Traditional oil elites publicly denounced Alian
Petrol as immoral. I build on classical theories of moral economy by
signalling how elites exploited stereotypes of ethnic difference,
contrasting the particularity of indigeneity with the universality of
technocratic, mestizo authority, to cultivate moral expectations about
continued elite control of oil resources and rents. This case allows us
to consider how and when elites foster ethnic difference to actively
shape moral economies of oil in postcolonial contexts.

Forced resettlement, central to state-led development throughout
the twentieth century, still paves the way for agroindustrial, hydroelectric,
urban, and other forms of development in much of the
global South today. In response to pressures from social movements
challenging human displacement, states, firms, and multinational
institutions increasingly seek the consent of impacted
communities, often offering monetary compensation and resettlement,
along with development assistance. Some states obtain consent
by offering resettlements with urban infrastructures and public
services. In Ecuador, the state has planned 200 urban-like resettlements
called “Millennium Cities” for communities on the Amazonian
oil and mining frontiers. Although resettlement in this context
transforms human–environment relations and generates new social
ills by isolating residents from food supplies and market networks,
many communities do consent to resettlement. In this paper, I call
attention to voluntary rural–urban resettlement in land grab governance
and I explore why communities might consent to their own
displacement. This paper suggests the need to account for the
material and social conditions that structure consent.

Oil extraction is a useful optic for thinking and writing about the future of sustainable resource use. While concerns over the burdens of oil extraction tend to be of a planetary scale (e.g. discussions around fossil-fuel addiction, energy security, and climate change), in this chapter we zoom in to the case of the Ecuadorian Amazon, where indigenous peoples have raised profound questions about oil extraction practices and outcomes. Amazonian peoples’ refusal to oil extraction, in particular, has received significant global attention and is considered emblematic of indigenous peoples’ sustainability thinking. At the same time, this common narrative about indigenous political action hides the complex ways that Amazonian peoples relate to oil extraction. We focus on the case of Playas del Cuyabeno (Playas hereafter), a Kichwa community located in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon to illustrate how “sustainability” is not an abstract concept that can be applied worldwide seamlessly, but that thinking and acting sustainably emerges from locally-rooted visions of the past, present and future. In this chapter, we introduce the dominant ways in which sustainability and oil extraction are currently discussed in Ecuador, and how debates around oil extraction tend to reproduce a particular way of thinking about sustainability. Next, we lay out our conceptual framework for examining sustainability in Playas. Then, we briefly trace the experiences that shaped how Playas residents see themselves in relation to oil, first resisting and then acquiescing to oil extraction within their territory. In the subsequent section, we examine the conditions and subjectivities through which people of Playas came to position themselves not only as supporters of oil extraction, but as potential oil producers themselves, despite popular narratives that associate indigenous peoples with anti-oil politics. We interrogate concepts of sustainability by tracing the conditions that made it possible for Playas’ population to imagine an indigenous oil company as a vehicle of sustainability, noting that sustainable development planning is not the exclusive practice of elite state, non-governmental, and multilateral institutions. We highlight the intersectional dimensions of the decisions of indigenous leaders to embrace oil extraction in the name of social and environmental sustainability. There is no single relation that explains positioning vis-à-vis oil in local contexts, but multiple relations and complex histories that construct ways of seeing and acting.

Oil production in the northern Ecuadorian Amazon has facilitated the urbanization of some of the world’s most biodiverse rainforests. New highways into the jungle, snaking pipelines, and population centers have followed in the wake of oil explorations and drilling over the last fifty years. Oil companies and the state have also sought indigenous consent to oil production in their territories in exchange for infrastructures, such as roads, electrification, and, in a few cases, urban-like settlements. Researchers, environmentalists, and engaged citizens have denounced urban development in indigenous territories as an unsustainable imposition of
Western culture on otherwise isolated, unwilling or unwitting communities. However, such narratives overlook the social legacies of prior waves of colonial capitalism in the northern Amazon. Histories of racism and racial capitalism are often erased by ahistorical representations of the Amazon as a timeless, uniform space of pre-Hispanic cultures, effectively obscuring the violence that produced modern Amazonía. In this dissertation, I detail the history of an indigenous community of subsistence farmers, fisher-people, and hunters that recently negotiated with the state oil company to receive an urban-like settlement in the rainforest. I describe their newfound hardships in a place at the far margins of market society, where they lack food, money, and maintenance, and I document nostalgia for farm life. Yet, by the same token, I describe their collective struggles to sustain this
so-called “Millennium City,” rather than abandon it. For generations, racism has been a motor driving these families to pursue integration into market relations, Western education, and urban spaces, as strategies to mitigate the physical and symbolic violence of dominant, white society. Today, negotiations over oil production between indigenous communities, the state, and companies in the northern Amazon unfold on an uneven social terrain shaped by centuries of oppression. This dissertation draws on multiple periods of fieldwork over six years that included interviews, video ethnography, and focus groups in the Cuyabeno Wildlife Reserve, as well as
archival research in the Amazon and Andes.