This project looks at the politics of recognition in the context of extractive development.
Specifically, this project focuses on the everyday indigenous experiences at the neoliberal frontier in the Peruvian Amazon and Andes.
We bring together expertise from Newcastle, Durham and Northumbria universities to create an inter-disciplinary network of specialists.
We're working to further knowledge of the politics of recognition in the context of neoliberal development and extraction in Latin America.
Approach
Our work is informed by in-depth engagements with indigenous Amazonian and Andean peoples in Peru. We engage with multiscalar experiences of the everyday micropolitics of neoliberalisation at the Latin American extractive frontier.
In our analyses of social change, we follow the processes through which indigenous identities and worldviews are made into politics and re-imagined by policy. We look at the levels of:
communities
indigenous political organisations
state actors
the state
Our work approaches these categories as dynamic, interrelated and co-constituted.
Specifically, we apply this analytical focus to the linguistic human rights of:
indigenous groups
indigenous discourses and practices of well-being
women activists
'other than human beings
This is to further knowledge of how these experiences affect the indigenous imagination(s)/construction(s) of the state and citizenship (and vice versa).
Professor Rosaleen Howard’s current research focuses on new developments in the field of language rights for indigenous peoples in the Andean-Amazonian states. This arises from constitutional and legislative reforms in the post-2000 period.
Her AHRC funded project, explores the training and use of state translator-interpreters between indigenous languages and Spanish. It looks at public service and prior consultation settings. In these settings, linguistic human rights have hitherto been disregarded.
This project is in collaboration with the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú and Heriot-Watt University.
She is looking at the training programmes in indigenous languages for Spanish monolingual populations. These programmes have been set up in response to recent linguistic rights legislation in that country. This is in collaboration with Santander Visiting Fellow, Julieta Zurita, from Bolivia´s Universidad Mayor de San Simón.
Dr Juan Pablo Sarmiento Barletti’s research focuses on well-being as a key aspect of development. It deals with its relationships to:
extractive industries
political violence
post-war reconstruction
indigenous politics
the politics of recognition in Latin America
His current work centres on indigenous Amazonian Ashaninka people's kametsa asaiki ('living well'). This is a joint project of reconciliation in the wake of the Peruvian civil war and of political resistance in response to the impositions of the Peruvian State’s extractive agenda.
Doctoral Researcher in Human Geography, Newcastle University
Lexy Seedhouse’s doctoral project is supported by an ESRC studentship. It explores contemporary extractive projects operating in Peru. It looks at their contextual situation and the significances in which they operate:
historical
political
economic
cultural
She uses the recent context of the Ley de Consulta Previa (Law of Prior Consultation) as an analytical frame.
She employs a mixed qualitative methodology. This includes multi-scalar ethnography to interrogate the multiple ways that indigenous identities are being understood, embodied and contested in Peru today.
Senior Lecturer in Sociology, Northumbria University
Dr Katy Jenkins is interested in theorising grassroots activists' participation in transnational spaces. She explores issues around professionalization and cosmopolitanism.
She has recently completed a research project exploring the experiences of women anti-mining activists in the Peruvian Andes.
Katy's previous research was in Peru. It focused on the role of grassroots women in implementing development projects and engaging with debates around:
