Socio-environmental injustices and ‘buen vivir’ in coastal cities of Chile

In the last decade, a growing number of socio-environmental conflicts have spread across Chile and other Latin American countries. This seminar seeks to explore how grassroots movements understand and defy environmental injustice in their territories, and examines Buen Vivir or Good Living alternatives that they are envisioning.  This opens up the debate about the deep inequalities observed both in the access and control of natural commons and in the distribution of the damage triggered by ecological degradation. Far from being an isolated process, the multiplication of socio-environmental struggles in Chile is part of a broader tendency observed in most Latin American countries, where local communities have resisted the proliferation of extractive industries and the privatisation of their land.

The presentation will be focusing on socio-environmental conflicts taking place in four Chilean coastal cities:  Quintero (central Chile), Coronel, Hualpén and Talcahuano (southern Chile). These four territories have experienced the degradation of their environment and human health due to industrial activities, particular in cases where policy has considered local communities as ‘sacrifice zones’. Drawing on an ethnographic approach to inquiry, combined with participatory-action research methods, this seminar provides a qualitative account of how socio-environmental injustice is signified and resisted by grassroots activists, how they problematise the sacrificial character of their territories and how they move beyond the idea of sacrifice in order to resist extractivism and create their own versions of buen vivir.

About

Katia Valenzuela-Fuentes is lecturer at Universidad de Concepcion, Chile, Visiting Fellow at CEEDR Middlesex University as part of the INCASI Project. She holds a Bachelor degree in Sociology, a Master in Politics and Government from Universidad de Concepción and FLACSO Chile, and a PhD in Politics from the University of Nottingham. Her main research interests include political sociology, social and environmental movements, urban sociology, participatory action research and critical epistemologies. She is an assistant professor at the Department of Territorial Planning and Urban Systems, Universidad de Concepción and leading researcher in the project: “Political Subjectivities in the Defense of Territory and Socio-environmental Conflicts in Chile”. This project is funded by the Program of Academy Insertion, National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research of Chile (CONICYT). Prior to her appointment as assistant professor, Dr Valenzuela worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Sustainable Urban Development – CEDEUS, Centre affiliated to both Universidad Católica de Chile and Universidad de Concepción. Her last publications include: “Militant ethnography and autonomous politics in Latin America” published in 2018 in Qualitative Research (DOI: 10.1177/1468794118787712); “Civil Society Reconstruction: Popular Organizations in Postearthquake Concepcion”, a joint article with Dr Jeanne Simon, published in Latin American Perspectives, Vol 44, Issue 4, 2017; and “Student Movements and Pedagogies of Resistance”, a forthcoming collaborative paper (authors: Motta, Valenzuela, Dixon and Bermúdez) to be published soon in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Latin American Politics.