Extraction | Expulsions | Resistance

Lisa Maya Knauer & Fred Murphy

Extraction / Expulsions / Resistance
Six sessions with Lisa Maya Knauer & Fred Murphy
Mondays, October 26 to November 30
7:30 to 9:30 pm

Within the hypermodern global economy, neoliberal regimes and private capital are turning more and more to very old forms of exploitation. Theorized by Marxists and other critical scholars as renewed primitive accumulation, “accumulation by dispossession” or just plain “expulsions,” projects launched or proposed by mining and energy multinationals, biofuel producers, dam builders, and timber harvesters are affecting lands, livelihoods, and resources across the planet. In the global South, a growing number of such “megaprojects” are spearheaded by investors and governments from the BRICS countries. Debates are raging over neo-extractivism’s value for needed economic development, and resistance by indigenous and working people is challenging such projects on the ground. This class explores the history and contexts of extractivism and the activist responses to it, through a series of case studies. The topics we will address including mining; oil and gas extraction; hydroelectric dams and struggles over water rights; land grabs, biofuels and GMOs. Our starting points are some of the classic writings on capital accumulation by Marx and Luxemburg, along with more contemporary works by Sassen and Galeano.

LISA MAYA KNAUER has been collaborating with anti-extractivist groups in Guatemala for the last several years. She is currently researching a book on indigenous resistance, autonomy and alternative citizenships and the neoliberal extractivist state.

FRED MURPHY has traveled extensively in Latin America as a journalist and studied and taught Latin American history at The New School. He is currently translating the memoirs of Hugo Blanco, a leader and activist in Peru’s peasant and indigenous movements since the 1950s.