Abstract
Given the volume of text that has been devoted to discussing Arturo Escobar’s Territories of Difference, with its analysis of contemporary social movements and development using theories developed in anthropology, geography, and cultural studies (to name just three), readers may be forgiven for wondering what new insights might be found in yet another forum on the subject. The manifold merits of the text, which, in addition to its theoretical contributions to the study of development and its effects, also provides ethnographic analysis of the social movement Proceso de Comunidades Negras (PCN), have been discussed at length in a range of publications. However, the seismic political shifts that have taken place over the past 12 months—shifts that threaten ethnic minorities and the communities where they live, not to mention the environment—should encourage both academics and activists to revisit Territories of Difference and to do so with some urgency. If 2011 represented a high-watermark for those arrayed against repressive regimes and destructive capitalism—from the Arab Spring to the Occupy and Podemos movements—2016 could fairly be said to represent its antithesis. Where do we go from here?
By grounding his analysis in place, Escobar demonstrates that struggles over production and uneven patterns of distribution are inextricably linked to cultural identities, historical practices, and ecological conditions (Escobar, 2008:104–105). This remains a critical intervention, all the more so because of the events of 2016. Escobar’s focus is on the struggles of Afro-Columbians seeking alternatives to capitalist exploitation in Colombia’s Pacific region, but the linkages between production, distribution, identities, history, and ecology also define the struggles of groups as varied as unemployed Welsh steel workers, disaffected African Americans, and budding Chilean environmentalists. By examining how PCN operates as a self-organizing network and how it is imbricated within other networks, (Escobar, 2008:260–268) Escobar offers a model for activists seeking to create spaces of possibility from which to develop alternatives to modernity. The depth of Escobar’s analysis and his willingness to complicate rather than simplify the narratives around social movements are, in my opinion, what set this work apart. Across and even within movements, different actors imagine and articulate different alternatives, leading to conflicts and negotiations. Possibility spaces allow for this kind of engagement—engagement that has never been more urgent.
In his opening chapter on place, Escobar (2008:59) examines the emergence of the Pacific as a region-territory of ethnic groups and the importance of this political construction. For activists seeking to halt the exploitation of the region by the rapacious forces of capital and state development initiatives, framing the Pacific in this way represented a “subaltern strategy of localization” in which the loss of identity and traditional values was tied to the loss of territory and biodiversity. Through their political construction of the region-territory, Escobar (2008: 68) argues, activists in the Pacific mobilized “practices of difference” and discursively connected biodiversity, sustainability, traditional production systems, cultural rights, and ethnic identities in defense of place.
But “Place” is only Escobar’s first chapter. Despite his focus on territory and the Colombian Pacific, Territories of Difference is concerned with how local movements offer alternatives to modernity through the practice of difference. Indeed, as the author notes, “the defense of certain cultural practices of the river communities is a strategic question to the extent that they are seen as embodying not only resistance to capitalism and modernity but elements for alternative world constructions” (Escobar, 2008:226). So how is it that practices of difference tied to local history and ecology inform wider resistance to the destructive forces of capital and to modernity itself?
One answer to this question comes from geographer Doreen Massey, who suggests that: places are also the moments through which the global is constituted, invented, coordinated, produced. They are “agents” in globalization … [T]his fact of the inevitably “local” production of the global means that there is potentially some purchase through “local” politics on wider global mechanisms. (Massey, 2004:14)
“Global” formations, such as discourses on individual rights and private property, profoundly influence local articulations of identity. But “local” formations, such as the idea that identity is “an ever-changing political project of cultural and political construction,” also challenge “global” paradigms. To illustrate this point, Escobar (2008: 226) relates how, by redefining identity as a contingent construction, PCN activists challenged the implicit understanding of identity as fixed within the Colombian Constitution of 1991. 1
In this context, the importance of network approaches to organizing and the significance of PCN’s position as a network within a network become clear. Several critics have already noted—and Escobar has acknowledged—that many of the PCN activists profiled in Territories of Difference are already transnational figures, traveling to conferences in northern Europe and regularly engaging with academics. Scholars are right to point out the problems with translation that result from asymmetries of power (Blaser, 2010:17). Many activists have far greater access and influence than those they claim to represent, and likely employ language in international meetings that would be wholly out of place in Afro-Colombian communities. However, focusing on this particular shortcoming on the part of the author risks overlooking a critical aspect of contemporary activism: without transnational networks, there is no purchase of local politics on wider global mechanisms, and a movement of movements based on the practice of difference is not possible.
In considering how ideas move through transnational networks of activists, I am reminded of Anna Tsing’s work, and her concept of “charismatic packages.” In Friction, Tsing traces how the environmental discourses and resistance tactics (“tree hugging” among them) developed by women in the Chipko movement in northern India influenced rubber tappers in Brazil, and how North American interest in rainforest conservation raised the profile of Brazilian rubber tappers, ultimately influencing environmental discourses in Indonesia (Tsing, 2005:227–235). 2 These “charismatic packages” enter new fields of meaning and of social action when they arrive in new geographical and social contexts, but they have been vital to activists struggling to articulate place- and ecology-based identities in the face of a universal, Eurocentric modernity. Scholars should ask questions about access and differential representation among activists, but fixating on this may undermine a vital mechanism for challenging further capitalist exploitation of remote, resource-rich spaces.
To cite an example from my own work in southern Chile, the successful opposition by Patagonia Sin Represas (PSR) to the HidroAysén project—a hydroelectric development scheme that would have built five dams on the Pasqua and Baker Rivers in northern Patagonia—might not have been possible without the financial support of the late American apparel magnate Douglas Tompkins and demonstrations by environmental activists in Barcelona and Paris. At the same time, it definitely would not have been possible if not for the mobilization of Chileans living in the region, whose identity (not unlike Afro-Colombians in the Pacific Region) has been tied to these rivers since the settlement of Patagonia (Romero, 2014; Thomas, 2016). Those opposed to hydroelectric power plants in Patagonia had differential access and influence, and mobilized for different reasons, however, by working together and exerting pressure at a range of scales they were effective. As with PCN activists seeking alternative development in Colombia’s Pacific region, PSR activists in southern Chile were influenced and aided by transnational discourses (Tsing’s “charismatic packages”) promoting environmental conservation and biodiversity.
This seems to me to be an excellent example of what Escobar (2008:261) terms the self-organization of social movements. There was no “readymade ‘PCN’ structure waiting to be occupied by activists” in the Pacific region. Instead, “without obeying a single logic or root cause, [activists] started to converge around what complexity theorists call a possibility space” (Escobar, 2008). The same might be said of PSR activists in southern Chile, who had varied reasons for being drawn to the movement. Though some were environmentalists, within the region many more were concerned about the effect of dam construction on local livelihoods, their lack of representation among the politicians who approved the project, and the fact that most of the electricity generated would be transmitted north to Santiago. The local, national, and international activists who made up the PSR network had, and in many cases retained, distinct concerns. The possibility space, then, was the result of varied motives and ideas about the future of the region that nonetheless allowed for the emergence of coherent alternatives to the designs of the state and capital. From this possibility space—as with PCN in Colombia—PSR began to propose different development trajectories for the region and to articulate a new regional identity.
Taken with approaches that place the PCN and PSR networks within wider activist networks, this kind of self-organization allows for “discourses and practices of articulation with a large variety of groups and constituencies … on a variety of issues” (Escobar, 2008:268). This possibility space is messy and complicated, and it inevitably contains asymmetrical power relations. However, it is also an enormously productive space that supports the practice of difference and the eventual emergence of alternatives to modernity.
Escobar’s willingness to show disagreements between activist groups and to highlight the different goals of different individuals within these groups demonstrates his commitment to the idea of possibility spaces within social movements. One of the great strengths of Territories of Difference is that Escobar avoids flattening local priorities into a simple defense-of-territory narrative, in which local practices are “good” and global practices are “bad.” Drawing on the work of J.K. Gibson-Graham (1996, 2004) he argues for what he terms “an antiessentialist view of the economy in which the economy constitutes a realm of heterogeneity and difference rather than a monolithic embodiment of an abstract capitalist essence” (Escobar, 2008:102). His description of community efforts to establish a camaronera (shrimp farm) demonstrates that economic concerns are not separate from concerns about local ecologies, identities, and practices. Instead, throughout the establishment of the camaronera, he writes how local activists “believed in the synergistic value of modern and ecological technologies, modern as well as traditional economic practices” (Escobar, 2008:99).
Activists’ commitment to creating a possibility space has allowed for this synergistic approach and has facilitated connections to other networks with similar, albeit not identical, goals and objectives. It also allowed for the co-evolution of PCN’s network and operating principles even as the organization responds to external forces (state development schemes, capitalist appropriation of territory, and the introduction of new laws to name just a few). While the ultimate, Utopian goal of activists in the Pacific may be to create alternatives to modernity—the effective decolonization and reorganization of the region around practices of difference—is not yet possible, by creating a possibility space where alternatives can be articulated and imagined, activists in the Pacific region have created real forms of alternative development, a vital first step (Escobar, 2008:198).
Although some have been critical of PCN’s emphasis on consensus and broad strategic discussions, arguing that this makes the movement inefficient and ineffective, Escobar notes that this has been essential in order to maintain the movement’s commitment to internal democracy (Escobar, 2008:263). The different organizing logic of PCN, which is more collectivist in character than other movements that focus on the rights of individuals or on specific policies, does not affect the organization’s ability to operate alongside more traditional advocacy networks.
This essay, like Territories of Difference, has focused on place-based social movements tied to local ecology and enacting what some political scientists have termed “environmental citizenship” (Latta and Wittman, 2012). However, the PCN model—that of a self-organizing network assembled around and continually reconstituting a possibility space—does not apply only to place-based movements. Possibility spaces within activist networks of all kinds are critical to imagining and articulating alternatives to modernity. As those concerned with creating a more equitable and inclusive world find themselves marginalized by reactionary nationalism, imagining and articulating alternatives across transnational networks has taken on a new importance. For activists and academics looking to understand and participate in social movements based on the practice of difference and the idea that another world is possible, rereading Territories of Difference is an excellent place to start.