Browsing by Autor "Isabella M. Radhuber"

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Don’t waste the crisis: The COVID-19 Anthropause as an experiment for rethinking human–environment relations
(SAGE Publishing, 2024) Amelia Fiske; Isabella M. Radhuber; Consuelo Fernández Salvador; Emília Rodrigues Araújo; Marie Jasser; Gertrude Saxinger; Bettina Zimmermann; Barbara Prainsack
The COVID-19 pandemic sparked radical changes in the way life was lived around the globe. With the rapid reduction in human mobility, short-term environmental improvements were seen across the world. Work and social routines were altered, and political action to reduce case numbers seemed to open a window of opportunity for socio-environmental change in a post-pandemic world. Inspired by conversations around the “COVID-19 Anthropause,” this paper probes the lived experiences and reflections that emerged in the pandemic pause. Three years after the onset of the pandemic, many initial environmental gains have been limited. Nonetheless, the COVID-19 Anthropause has brought human–environment relations into new light, sparking introspection and forms of broader social critique surrounding what kinds of socio-political courage and structural change is necessary to achieve new post-pandemic realities. Our research shows the heterogeneity of experiences of the Anthropause, highlighting the ways that uncritical engagement with the concept can obscure overlapping structural inequalities, and reinforce harmful binaries around the presence and absence of humans in nature. Drawing on longitudinal, qualitative data from Latin America and Europe, we enrich debates over the implications of the pandemic for human–environment relations and underscore the need to attend to radical forms of difference amid any global environmental concept.
Expansión extractivista, resistencia comunitaria y 'despojo político' en Bolivia
(University of Arizona, 2021) Diego Andreucci; Isabella M. Radhuber; Marxa Chávez León
La intensificación del extractivismo en Boliviades de 2006 y el avance hacia territorios indígenas y áreas protegidas conlleva impactos negativos a espacios de vida y formas de organización política que se encuentran en ellos. Esta transformación es ejecutada a partir de "cercamientos" que implican "despojos múltiples" por lo general violentos, sobre territorios comunitarios. Este artículo amplía los debates sobre despojo en la ecología política. Profundiza la comprensión de los procesos de desestructuración social en el contexto extractivista, proponiendo el término de 'despojo político.' El artículo expone los varios ciclos históricos de cercamientos y despojos que Bolivia ha vivido desde el período colonial. Presenta los casos principales de mega-infraestructura y extractivos en el marco de la ola extractivista ampliada desde 2006, detallando los impactos que éstos significan para áreas protegidas, territorios indígenas y comunidades campesinas. Despojos múltiples separan los ámbitos de producción y reproducción, e interrumpen la relación intrínseca de las comunidades con su entorno. Argumentamos que el despojo político es parte fundante de la fragmentación de las relaciones comunitarias, y funciona mediante la expropiación de la voz política y de los espacios de decisión y participación.
Extractive Bargains Reconciling Postcolonial Pluralism? Plural Economies in Bolivia and Ecuador
(2023) Isabella M. Radhuber; Marie Jasser; Diego Andreucci
Motley territories in a plurinational state: forest fires in the Bolivian Chiquitanía
(Taylor & Francis, 2021) Marie Jasser; Isabella M. Radhuber; Mirna Inturias
In August and September 2019, wildfires destroyed over 3 million hectares of forest in the Bolivian Chiquitanía. They were caused by slash-and-burn land clearance techniques used to prepare land for agriculture. In this article, we examine how the forest fires constitute a way of making territory, paying particular attention to how underlying relations of power have historically shaped territories in the region. We trace the actors and social relations of power that have historically developed in the region from the 17th century to today, putting an emphasis on the necessity to expand the temporal lens through which we analyse struggles over territory in Latin America. The Chiquitanía region is an illustrative case study, as it reflects Bolivia’s highly diverse society, revealing multiple, simultaneously existing territorialised social relations, which we conceptually grasp as motley territories. We define motley territories as diverse territorialised social relations that were established in different epochs but continue to coexist in often unarticulated ways. We argue that the state-sanctioned appropriation of slash-and-burn practices by landowners is a mechanism to integrate more land into the agricultural frontier while rendering other forms of inhabiting those motley territories more difficult.