Dr. Alejandro Mora Motta’s recently published book: “Tree Plantation Extractivism in Chile: Territories, Fundamental Human Needs, and Resistance”

In 2024 our postdoctoral research fellow Dr. Alejandro Mora Motta published his book on Tree Plantation Extractivism in Chile: Territories, Fundamental Human Needs, and Resistance with Routledge. Besides uncovering part of Chile’s colonial past and its enduring consequences for the Mapuche-Williche and peasant communites, the book gives food for thought to some of the key questions explored in the Global Heritage Lab, namely, which human-environment relationships exist beyond European notions of nature and culture? And How are contact and conflict histories negotiated globally? The debates fostered by this work are essential for the much needed common reflecions on how we can create a common, pluriversal future in times of ecological and social crises.

Book Abstract:

This book examines how extractivism transforms territories and affects the well-being of rural people, drawing on in-depth fieldwork conducted on tree plantations in Chile.

The book argues that pine and eucalyptus monoculture plantations in southern Chile are a form of extractivism representing a mode of nature appropriation that captures large amounts of natural resources to produce wooden-based raw materials with little processing and an export-oriented focus. The book discusses the nexus of extractivism, territorial transformations, well-being, and emerging resistances using a participatory action research methodological approach in the Region of Los Ríos, southern Chile. The findings show how the configuration of an extractivist logging enclave generated a substantial and irrevocable reordering of human-nature relations, resulting in the territorial and ontological occupation of rural places that disrupted the fundamental human needs of peasants and indigenous people. The book maintains that Chile’s green growth development approach does not challenge the consolidated tree plantation enclave controlled by large multinationals. Instead, green growth legitimises the extractivist logic. The book draws parallels with other countries and regions to contribute to wider debates surrounding these topics.

This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of the extractive industries, development studies, political ecology, and natural resource governance.

Reference:

Mora-Motta, A. (2024). Tree Plantation Extractivism in Chile: Territories, Fundamental Human Needs, and Resistance (1st ed.). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003392521

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