Penelope Fay Anthias

Aktuel forskning

My research interests lie at the interface between evolving forms of governmentality, situated struggles for postcolonial recognition, and new frontiers of capitalist resource extraction. I explore these interfaces through ethnographic research on indigenous territorial claims in Bolivia.

My new book, Limits to Decolonization (Cornell University Press, 2018), examines the policy-formation, on-the-ground implementation, and surprising legacies of a World Bank-financed indigenous land titling programme in Bolivia, Native Community Lands. Based on the experiences of thirty-six Guaraní communities in the gas-rich Chaco region, the book traces how indigenous territorial claims have been undermined two interlinked sets of dynamics: historical articulations of race, property, and power in the Bolivian Chaco, and the territorial and political dynamics of hydrocarbon development. I also explore how indigenous peoples are rethinking their visions of territory and autonomy in response to these limits, and in the context of a new era of “hydrocarbon citizenship” under the government of Evo Morales.

My work contributes to debates on territory, property and citizenship; neoliberal and post-neoliberal governance; and the political ecology of extraction.

Selected publications

Book:

2018, Limits to Decolonization: Indigeneity, Territory, and Hydrocarbon Politics in the Bolivian Chaco. Cornell University Press. http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/?GCOI=80140100747480.

Articles:

Forthcoming, ‘Indigenous peoples and the new extraction: from territorial rights to hydrocarbon citizenship in the Bolivian Chaco’. Special issue ‘Open Veins Revisited’ N. Fabricant (ed.) Latin American Perspectives.

2017, ‘Ch’ixi landscapes: Indigeneity and Capitalism in the Bolivian Chaco’. Special issue ‘Rendering Land Investable’ J.E. Goldstein and J.S. Yates (eds.) Geoforum.

2015, ‘The ethno-environmental fix and its limits: indigenous land titling and the production of not-quite-neoliberal natures in Bolivia’, with Sarah A. Radcliffe. Special issue 'Not quite neoliberal natures' C. de Freitas, A.J. Marston and K. Bakker (eds.) Geoforum.

Book chapters:

2012, ‘Regulación ambiental de los hidrocarburos en el Campo Margarita, Tarija’. In Peralta y Hollenstein (eds.), Jamás Tan Cerca Arremetió lo Lejos: Inversiones extraterritoriales, crisis ambiental y acción colectiva en América Latina. Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar: Sede Ecuador; Centro Latinoamericano para el Desarrollo Rural.

2012, 'Territorializing resource conflicts in “post-neoliberal” Bolivia: hydrocarbons development and indigenous land titling in TCO Itika Guasu’, in Haarstad, H. (ed.), New Political Spaces in Latin American Natural Resource Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 129-150.

Unpublished works

2016, La Esquiva Promesa del Territorio: Un Estudio Etnográfico de la Titulación de Tierras Indígenas en el Chaco Boliviano. Spanish translation of PhD dissertation. Translated by Hernando Calla Ortega. 

2014, The Elusive Promise of Territory: An Ethnographic Case Study of Indigenous Land Titling in the Bolivian Chaco”. PhD dissertation submitted to Department of Geography, University of Cambridge.