Part 1: Extraction, infrastructure, and the coloniality of violence: Why land matters

Vicki Reif-Breitwieser - Doctoral Researcher, Department of Politics & IR, University of Sheffield

Joanna Tidy - Lecturer, Department of Politics & IR, University of Sheffield

Extractivism, or the process of extracting minimally processed, natural resources at high intensity for the purpose of exportation, has long functioned as a mechanism of violence in the ‘colonial and neocolonial plunder and appropriation’ of Latin American land. To this day, its extractivist logic based on the subjugation of people and planet to capital, characterises the continents’ political economies. Adapting over time, this logic has remained constant as the global economy is moving from one commodity boom to the next, most recently evidenced by the rise of ‘green extractivism’, or ‘forms of resource extraction linked to or justified by the “green” economy’, such as the World Bank’s ‘climate-smart mining’ initiative. 

Both historically in the context of colonial capitalism, and much more recently in the binding of economic development with liberal modes of war, British military land use and infrastructure projects mobilised towards the goal of capitalist development have been engaged in various forms of violent extractive reordering. Whilst military engineering is often presented as a somewhat benign military specialisation, and their infrastructure projects viewed as being apart from ‘actual’ violence, military infrastructure projects such as road building have been a fundamental aspect of colonial and postcolonial violence. In the context of recent liberal military projects, road building operates simultaneously as a technique for control of ‘terrain’ and for securing territory for imperatives of capital and market by opening up populations to the pacifying logics and relations of liberal economics. Roads underpin, for instance, the movement of wage labour, and the production of a population as an accessible market. 

Considering these two contexts, land plays a critical role: as a physical site of violence; as a tool that enables material and epistemic violence; as a symbol of contestation and resistance; and as a resource that is fought over. Despite these commonalities, the function of land is often localised and embedded in longstanding histories of violence. At the same time, these functions may intersect and overlap, upholding the wider colonial power structures of the global capitalist system. 

In the context of Latin American extractivism, violence is not only direct and clearly visible (for example in the displacement of communities, assassinations of land defenders or environmental impacts), but manifests slowly as democratic rights are gradually eroded, or as knowledge claims of those who ‘threaten’ the process of extraction become disempowered. In the case of British military engineering and infrastructure projects in contexts such as post-2001 Afghanistan, the direct and more visible degradations of land and environment that are associated with road building (for instance mining agricultural land for topsoil to be used as road fill or clearing orchards to make a route for a road) are accompanied by slower, less overt processes of violence. These include administrative and legal mechanisms through which military infrastructure projects entail the gradual degradation of the relationships people have with the land. For example, the British military’s payment of compensation for damage to land in Afghanistan was contingent on the land being formally registered within a liberal regime of private property (something seen as integral to the economic development of the country). This contributed to the gradual erosion of pre-existing customary and communal relationships to and with the land.

Relationships with land are also affected in the extractive frontiers of the Argentinian lithium industry, where the surging demand for the ‘white gold’ considered critical in the global energy transition is driving a rapid proliferation of projects. These require not only the appropriation of land, but have created knowledge disputes about the environmental impacts that extraction has on water-scarce ecosystems. For example, in the Salar de Hombre Muerto, state and corporate actors point to ‘scientific’ data to dismiss adverse impacts on water levels. However, their studies do not account for the cumulative environmental impacts of multiple industrial projects drawing on the same water source; the Los Platos river.  Consequently, the worries of affected communities about losing their only freshwater source are dismissed as insignificant. These dynamics are reflective of the ‘coloniality of knowledge’ which has fuelled the colonisation of Latin America, and the wider pursuit of ‘development’. By preferencing Western visions of ‘progress’ this enables the ‘ongoing epistemicides and the destruction of non-Western and indigenous knowledges’. 

Violence thus originates not only from the physical act of extraction, but is preceded by an ideological devaluation of alternative modes of knowing. What reinforces these hierarchies are seemingly mundane practices which are veiled in the language of Western science, and aim to disprove communities’ concerns about the impact on territories. This includes companies strategically drawing the boundaries for Environmental Impact Assessments, considering only the land used for individual projects, and dismissing their interconnectedness with wider ecosystems. Far from being ‘mundane’ these acts are deeply territorial and violent as hegemonic actors redefine land according to their interests, which enables its control, dispossession and appropriation. Land therefore functions as the material basis for extraction and simultaneously constitutes an intangible asset that is strategically used for political and economic gain. 

There is no doubt that the relationship between land and violence is far from homogenous but varies across time and space, performing contextually specific functions. Considering the overarching similarities between these moments of violence however, demonstrates how land acts as a node where material and epistemic violence meet and mutually reinforce each other. Considering these insights, we posit it provides us with an emerging research agenda for IR and IPE, through which to understand the often unrecognised modalities of violence which have characterised the global system in the past, and continue to shape its present and future. 

Joanna’s contribution to this blog draws on work previously published in the European Journal of International Relations.