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Cuts, Flows, and Leaks: Enclaving Practices and Countertopographies at Bolivia's Hydrocarbon-Conservation Frontier

Author ORCID Identifier

      https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5776-0401

Abstract / Resumen / Resumo

This paper critically interrogates the place of the extractive enclave in neoextractivist states, drawing on an ongoing conflict over natural gas development in the Tariquía National Reserve of Flora and Fauna in southern Bolivia. Building on anthropological and geographical literature on the production of space and extractive infrastructures, I argue that neoextractivist development rests on a double movement of cuts and flows. On the one hand, corporate enclaving practices work to hide diffuse environmental impacts and shield hydrocarbon companies from local claims for accountability. On the other hand, the state directs flows of money, infrastructure and political influence to territories of extraction in order to manufacture consent, situating these spaces within broader geographies of hydrocarbon citizenship. I show how the boundaries of protected areas – key sites for new extraction in Bolivia – have become implicated in and the management of these cuts and flows. The paper also examines how community activists have countered these strategies of spatial regulation by mobilising around leaks of materials and knowledges that emanate from established sites of extraction. The paper advances understanding of how neoextractivist territorialisation both reproduces and exceeds traditional understandings of the extractive enclave, while also demonstrating the potential for subaltern circulations and activist countertopographies to disrupt this spatial production.

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