RESOURCE EXTRACTION & RESOURCE NATIONALISM
A major focus of my research has been the political ecologies of resource extraction and resource nationalism, primarily in Bolivia. This work can be grouped into three foci. The first focus examined hydrocarbon governance, indigenous identity and the state. This project, funded by the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), was commissioned as part of a broader study entitled, “Identity, power and rights” sponsored by the UNRISD (2007). It concerned the political ecologies of natural gas extraction in eastern Bolivia, and the ways that gas development has taken on significance for national – and nationalist – politics. In particular, the project examined the relationship between resource governance, understandings of the nation, and the contentious politics of ethnicity and class in Bolivia.
A second focus of this work examined water, mining and rural Livelihoods in the Bolivian Andes. This work, funded by a Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Fellowship (2011), focused on the social and environmental implications of mine-related water contamination in the Department of Oruro, on the Bolivian Altiplano. Centuries of mining activity in the watershed has led to severe contamination of the Desaguadero River and Lakes Uru Uru and Poopó, part of the ecologically unique Titicaca-Desaguadero-Poopó-Salares endorheic (closed basin) hydrological system. This project examined three interrelated phenomena: (1) the ways that severe water contamination shapes the lives and livelihoods of indigenous and campesino populations downstream from mine sites; (2) the structures and processes of environmental governance through which water contamination and mining are managed; and (3) the forms of social mobilization that local populations engage in to seek remediation and compensation from mining companies and the Bolivian state.
A third focus of this work examines the relationship between extractivism and resource nationalism in the Andes. On the one hand, I examine contemporary regimes of extractivism: the overriding political and economic dependence of many global south states on resource extraction as a source of government revenues. On the other hand, I also consider the production of resource nationalism, understood as forms of nationalist ideology and collective belonging produced in relation to particular resource regimes.
Publications
2014 Tom Perreault (ed.), Minería, Agua y Justicia Social en los Andes: Experiencias Comparativas de Perú y Bolivia. Cusco: Centro Bartolomé de las Casas and La Paz: PIEB/Plural.
BOOK
In press Riley Mulhern, Maggie Mulhern, and Tom Perreault, “Deficiencies in the industry-held view of the social license to operate: A case study of community exclusion and conflict at Newmont’s Kori Chaca cold mine, Oruro, Bolivia.” The Extractive Industries and Society.
2020 Tom Perreault, “Bolivia’s high stakes lithium gamble,” NACLA Report on theAmericas, 52(2): 165-172.
2019 Natalie Koch and Tom Perreault, “Resource Nationalism,” Progress in Human Geography, 43(4): 611-631.
2018 Tom Perreault. “Energy, extractivism, and hydrocarbon geographies in contemporary Latin America,” Journal of Latin American Geography, 17(3): 235-252.
2018 Tom Perreault, “Mining, meaning and memory in the Andes,” The Geographical Journal, 184(3): 229-241.
2017 Andrea Marston and Tom Perreault, “Consent, coercion and cooperativismo: Mining cooperatives and resource regimes in Bolivia,” Environment and Planning A, 49(2): 252-272.
2015 Tom Perreault, “Performing participation: Mining, power, and the limits of consultation in Bolivia.” The Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, 20(3): 433-451.
2013 Tom Perreault, “Dispossession by accumulation? Mining, water, and the nature of enclosure on the Bolivian Altiplano,” Antipode 45(5): 1050-1069
2010 Tom Perreault, “Conflictos del gas y su gobernanza: El caso de los Guaraní de Tarija, Bolivia,” Anthropologica, 28 (Suplemento 1): 139-162.
2010 Tom Perreault and Gabriela Valdivia, “Hydrocarbons, popular protest and national imaginaries: Ecuador and Bolivia in comparative context,” Geoforum, 41(5): 689-699.
2006 Tom Perreault, “From the Guerra del Agua to the Guerra del Gas: Resource governance, neoliberalism, and popular protest in Bolivia,” Antipode, 38(1): 150-172.
JOURNAL Articles
Forthcoming Tom Perreault, “State of nature: On the co-constitution of resources, state and nation.” In Andrew EG Jones, Natalie Koch, Christopher Lizotte, Juho Juukkonen and Sami Moisio (eds.), Changing Geographies of the State: New Spaces of Geopolitics. Cheltenham (UK): Edward Elgar Publishing.
Forthcoming Tom Perreault, “Toward a critical-geographic understanding of resource nationalism.” In Matthew Himley, Gabriela Valdivia and Elizabeth Havice (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Critical Resource Geography. London: Routledge.
2018 Tom Perreault, “Mining and development in Latin America.” In J. Cupples, M. Palomino-Schalscha and M. Prieto (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Latin American Development, London: Routledge, pp. 421-431.
2017 Tom Perreault “Tendencies in tension: Resource governance and social contradictions in contemporary Bolivia,” In Governance in the Extractive Industries: Power, Cultural Politics and Regulation, Lori Leonard and Siba N. Grovogui (eds.), London: Routledge, pp. 17-38.
2014 Tom Perreault, “Introducción: Minería, agua y justicia social en los Andes.” In Minería, Agua y Justicia Social en los Andes: Experiencias comparativas de Perú y Bolivia, Tom Perreault (ed.), Cusco: CBC/La Paz: PIEB, pp. 13-40.
2014 Tom Perreault, “Agua, minería, modos de vida y justicia social en el altiplano boliviano,” In Minería, Agua y Justicia Social en los Andes: Experiencias comparativas de Perú y Bolivia, Tom Perreault (ed.), Cusco: CBC/La Paz: PIEB, pp. 101-124.
2014 Tom Perreault, “Participación y poder: La consulta previa como tecnología de gobernar en el sector minero de Bolivia.” In Industrias Extractivas en América Latina, Astrid Ulloa (ed.), Bogotá: Universidad Nacional, pp. 107-136.
2013 Tom Perreault, “Nature and nation: the territorial logics of hydrocarbon governance in Bolivia,” In Subterranean Struggles: New Geographies of Extractive Industries in Latin America, Jeffrey Bury and Anthony Bebbington (eds.), Austin: University of Texas Press, pp. 67-90.
2013 Tom Perreault, “¿Despojo por acumulación? Minería, agua, y justicia social en el Altiplano boliviano,” In Aguas Robadas: Despojo Hídrico y Movilización Social, Aline Arroyo and Rutgerd Boelens (eds.), Quito: Abya Yala and Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, pp. 187-206.
2012 Tom Perreault, “Extracting justice: Natural gas, indigenous mobilization and the Bolivian state.” In The Politics of Resource Extraction: Indigenous Peoples, Mutlinational Corporations, and the State, Suzana Sawyer and Edmund Terence Gomez (eds.), London: Palgrave, pp. 75-102.
BOOK CHAPTERS
2011 Tom Perreault, “Minería, agua y vidas rurales: impactos socio-ambientales de la minería en la sub-cuenca Huanuni (informe de resultados preliminares).” Unpublished report prepared for the Centro de Ecología y Pueblos Andinos (CEPA), Oruro, Bolivia, 30pp.
2008 Tom Perreault, “Natural gas, indigenous mobilization, and the Bolivian state,” Identities, Conflict and Cohesion Programme Paper No. 12, United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD), 27pp.