Donald V Kingsbury
Biographic Data
| ID | 1542757 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Donald V Kingsbury |
| GIVEN NAMES | Donald V |
| FAMILY NAME | Kingsbury |
| SIGNATURE | KINGSBURY D V |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Toronto |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6365-279X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 21 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 39 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 21 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2010 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Economic diplomacy, decarbonized
This article explores potential impacts of Canada’s National Critical Mineral Strategy on existing trade and aid dynamics with Latin America. Building on a historical analysis of Canada’s “extractives turn” in economic diplomacy with Latin America since the 1990s, we ask how emerging imperatives to secure extractive and downstream industries associated with global decarbonization are often at odds with hemispheric trade priorities, development ag…
Extractive transitions
This article makes the case for extractive transitions as an alternative or complementary framing of the means and consequences of existing proposals for decarbonization. Official energy transitions strategies in the Global North and Global South often promise a response to the climate crises accompanied by economic growth. According to this logic, new industries and infrastructure, electric vehicles, and battery manufacture have the ability to p…
Redundancies, layers, and dilemmas
An expanding array of transnational Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) standards has emerged to mitigate harms across critical minerals supply chains. This proliferation of international, private governance standards is interacting with domestic, public regulations guiding mining activity in resource rich states. When private and public requirements duplicate, overlap, or diverge they can create inconsistent processes, administrative bur…
Lithium’s Northern Buzz
In the “buzz” before extraction begins in earnest, landscapes, financial interests, and communities are reshaped in anticipation of economic windfalls—even if a project never materializes. The buzz around critical minerals necessary for decarbonization technologies adds the existential threat of the climate crisis to the financial, social, and political pressures that normally drive resource extraction. As this article illustrates in its study of…
We are a mining region’
Lithium’s buzz
Plans for decarbonizing energy transitions – attempts to mitigate the climate crisis through electrifying the global economy – will require minerals like lithium for the electric vehicles and batteries of the near future. As a result, a ‘buzz’ of economic speculation, governmental policy making, and grassroots opposition is intensifying in the so-called ‘lithium triangle’ in Southern Bolivia, north western Argentina, and Northern Chile. Using arc…
Energy transitions in the shadow of a dictator
The global economy’s neoliberal era began in 1973 with a military coup in Chile lead by General Augusto Pinochet. Though the country returned to civilian rule in 1990, the dictatorship continues to determine much of Chile’s political economy, especially in extractive sectors, a legacy that also carries consequences for decarbonization in the 21 st century. As the latest stage of globalization, contemporary energy transitions offer an opportunity …
Climate action and populism of the left in Ecuador
There is little reason to expect developing countries to take costly local actions for global climate benefits. This is less so when populist governments of the left – who claim to speak for the poorest sectors of the population – must negotiate environmental protection and development. This article examines climate action in Ecuador, one of the poorest countries of Latin America, during a populist moment. We propose an analytical framework that …
Latin American Extractivism and (or after) the Left
This essay reviews the following works
Combined and uneven energy transitions
Mounting impacts of climate change have increased calls for a planetary energy transition, usually understood as the decarbonization of the global economy. All too often, however, these calls rely on technological or legislative measures, betraying an apolitical understanding of climate change and insufficient appreciation for the uneven global distribution of safety, risk, and power. Through an examination of recent events in Cuba and Venezuela,…
On PetroCaribe
Populism or Petrostate
In 2007, the Government of Ecuador announced the Yasuní-ITT Initiative: a proposal to forego exploiting 20% of its oil reserves located in the Yasuní National Park – home to one of the earth’s most biodiverse places and several indigenous groups living in voluntary isolation. In exchange, Ecuador asked the international community for $3.6 billion, roughly half the projected revenues of conventional oil extraction. Five years later, Ecuador receiv…
Spectacular Modernity
Infrastructure and Insurrection
This article envisions the Caracas Metro as infrastructure that forms and is formed by political subjectivity and urban space. The first section provides a brief history of the metro as conceived by modernization-minded politicians in the twentieth century. Here the Metro is seen as playing a pedagogical function in accordance with a larger tradition of Venezuelan positivism. The second section examines a shift in the social and political composi…
From Populism To Protagonism (and Back?) in Bolivarian Venezuela
Ernesto Laclau’s On Populist Reason, now over a decade old, is one of our generation’s most nuanced contributions to debates on political community and social change in the era of mass democracy. Against critiques of populism as illiberal demagoguery, Laclau’s conceptualization emphasizes the discursive nature of power and politics and considers populist sequences as radical democratic openings in an era of consolidated global neoliberal capitali…
Oil's Colonial Residues
This article argues oil occupies a central role in the discursive universe of Venezuelan underdevelopment, producing anxieties of vulnerability and dependency. These anxieties are internalised and reproduced in what I describe as the coloniality of oil. Coloniality naturalises, hides, and rewrites maldevelopment – a process in which the developed world stymies growth elsewhere through the machinations of hard or soft power – as underdevelopment –…
Populism as Post-Politics
Bolívar as precursor
This essay examines the social and political functions of the myth of Simón Bolívar in early twenty-first-century Venezuela. Against modernist positions that see myth as an element of “false consciousness”, I argue that Bolivarian mythology is productive. It structures socio-political subjectivity. It shapes behavior in and the infrastructure of cities. It regulates and informs the relationship of subjects to the normative time of development. As…
Between Multitude and Pueblo
Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution uses officially sponsored commemorations, festivals, and publications to underscore its relation to and dependence on unrest and ungovernability. In this way, it founds a basis and legitimacy not through a historical link to a people or territory, juridical recognition of sovereignty, nor to bureaucratic and institutional continuity, but rather to a direct link to constituent power. However, as opposed to other c…
Something Always Escapes
Something Always Escapes! : Beasley-Murray’s Posthegemony Donald V. Kingsbury (bio) Jon Beasley-Murray, Posthegemony: Political Theory and Latin America. University of Minnesota Press: 2011. $25.00 (paper) $75.00 (cloth). 376 pages. ISBN 978-0-8166-4715-6 Jon Beasley-Murray’s refrain throughout Posthegemony: Political Theory and Latin America – something always escapes! – is both a political caution and a methodological imperative. Politics, he c…
Rethinking Venezuelan Politics
After a decade in power, Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution faces a newly multilateral Washington DC and global capitalism’s most significant crisis in a generation. In order to properly understand the hopes and impediments for the future of the Revolution, I argue, it is first necessary to consider the current trajectory and series of accomplishments it has made. In this review-essay, I consider the three most recent and comprehensive works on th…
Populism or Petrostate
In 2007, the Government of Ecuador announced the Yasuní-ITT Initiative: a proposal to forego exploiting 20% of its oil reserves located in the Yasuní National Park – home to one of the earth’s most biodiverse places and several indigenous groups living in voluntary isolation. In exchange, Ecuador asked the international community for $3.6 billion, roughly half the projected revenues of conventional oil extraction. Five years later, Ecuador receiv…
Oil's Colonial Residues
This article argues oil occupies a central role in the discursive universe of Venezuelan underdevelopment, producing anxieties of vulnerability and dependency. These anxieties are internalised and reproduced in what I describe as the coloniality of oil. Coloniality naturalises, hides, and rewrites maldevelopment – a process in which the developed world stymies growth elsewhere through the machinations of hard or soft power – as underdevelopment –…
Redundancies, layers, and dilemmas
An expanding array of transnational Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) standards has emerged to mitigate harms across critical minerals supply chains. This proliferation of international, private governance standards is interacting with domestic, public regulations guiding mining activity in resource rich states. When private and public requirements duplicate, overlap, or diverge they can create inconsistent processes, administrative bur…
On PetroCaribe
Between Multitude and Pueblo
Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution uses officially sponsored commemorations, festivals, and publications to underscore its relation to and dependence on unrest and ungovernability. In this way, it founds a basis and legitimacy not through a historical link to a people or territory, juridical recognition of sovereignty, nor to bureaucratic and institutional continuity, but rather to a direct link to constituent power. However, as opposed to other c…
Climate action and populism of the left in Ecuador
There is little reason to expect developing countries to take costly local actions for global climate benefits. This is less so when populist governments of the left – who claim to speak for the poorest sectors of the population – must negotiate environmental protection and development. This article examines climate action in Ecuador, one of the poorest countries of Latin America, during a populist moment. We propose an analytical framework that …
Latin American Extractivism and (or after) the Left
This essay reviews the following works
From Populism To Protagonism (and Back?) in Bolivarian Venezuela
Ernesto Laclau’s On Populist Reason, now over a decade old, is one of our generation’s most nuanced contributions to debates on political community and social change in the era of mass democracy. Against critiques of populism as illiberal demagoguery, Laclau’s conceptualization emphasizes the discursive nature of power and politics and considers populist sequences as radical democratic openings in an era of consolidated global neoliberal capitali…
Bolívar as precursor
This essay examines the social and political functions of the myth of Simón Bolívar in early twenty-first-century Venezuela. Against modernist positions that see myth as an element of “false consciousness”, I argue that Bolivarian mythology is productive. It structures socio-political subjectivity. It shapes behavior in and the infrastructure of cities. It regulates and informs the relationship of subjects to the normative time of development. As…
Rethinking Venezuelan Politics
After a decade in power, Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution faces a newly multilateral Washington DC and global capitalism’s most significant crisis in a generation. In order to properly understand the hopes and impediments for the future of the Revolution, I argue, it is first necessary to consider the current trajectory and series of accomplishments it has made. In this review-essay, I consider the three most recent and comprehensive works on th…
Something Always Escapes
Something Always Escapes! : Beasley-Murray’s Posthegemony Donald V. Kingsbury (bio) Jon Beasley-Murray, Posthegemony: Political Theory and Latin America. University of Minnesota Press: 2011. $25.00 (paper) $75.00 (cloth). 376 pages. ISBN 978-0-8166-4715-6 Jon Beasley-Murray’s refrain throughout Posthegemony: Political Theory and Latin America – something always escapes! – is both a political caution and a methodological imperative. Politics, he c…
Between Multitude and Pueblo
Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution uses officially sponsored commemorations, festivals, and publications to underscore its relation to and dependence on unrest and ungovernability. In this way, it founds a basis and legitimacy not through a historical link to a people or territory, juridical recognition of sovereignty, nor to bureaucratic and institutional continuity, but rather to a direct link to constituent power. However, as opposed to other c…
Populism as Post-Politics
Bolívar as precursor
This essay examines the social and political functions of the myth of Simón Bolívar in early twenty-first-century Venezuela. Against modernist positions that see myth as an element of “false consciousness”, I argue that Bolivarian mythology is productive. It structures socio-political subjectivity. It shapes behavior in and the infrastructure of cities. It regulates and informs the relationship of subjects to the normative time of development. As…
From Populism To Protagonism (and Back?) in Bolivarian Venezuela
Ernesto Laclau’s On Populist Reason, now over a decade old, is one of our generation’s most nuanced contributions to debates on political community and social change in the era of mass democracy. Against critiques of populism as illiberal demagoguery, Laclau’s conceptualization emphasizes the discursive nature of power and politics and considers populist sequences as radical democratic openings in an era of consolidated global neoliberal capitali…
Oil's Colonial Residues
This article argues oil occupies a central role in the discursive universe of Venezuelan underdevelopment, producing anxieties of vulnerability and dependency. These anxieties are internalised and reproduced in what I describe as the coloniality of oil. Coloniality naturalises, hides, and rewrites maldevelopment – a process in which the developed world stymies growth elsewhere through the machinations of hard or soft power – as underdevelopment –…
Infrastructure and Insurrection
This article envisions the Caracas Metro as infrastructure that forms and is formed by political subjectivity and urban space. The first section provides a brief history of the metro as conceived by modernization-minded politicians in the twentieth century. Here the Metro is seen as playing a pedagogical function in accordance with a larger tradition of Venezuelan positivism. The second section examines a shift in the social and political composi…
Populism or Petrostate
In 2007, the Government of Ecuador announced the Yasuní-ITT Initiative: a proposal to forego exploiting 20% of its oil reserves located in the Yasuní National Park – home to one of the earth’s most biodiverse places and several indigenous groups living in voluntary isolation. In exchange, Ecuador asked the international community for $3.6 billion, roughly half the projected revenues of conventional oil extraction. Five years later, Ecuador receiv…
Spectacular Modernity
On PetroCaribe
Combined and uneven energy transitions
Mounting impacts of climate change have increased calls for a planetary energy transition, usually understood as the decarbonization of the global economy. All too often, however, these calls rely on technological or legislative measures, betraying an apolitical understanding of climate change and insufficient appreciation for the uneven global distribution of safety, risk, and power. Through an examination of recent events in Cuba and Venezuela,…
Latin American Extractivism and (or after) the Left
This essay reviews the following works
Lithium’s buzz
Plans for decarbonizing energy transitions – attempts to mitigate the climate crisis through electrifying the global economy – will require minerals like lithium for the electric vehicles and batteries of the near future. As a result, a ‘buzz’ of economic speculation, governmental policy making, and grassroots opposition is intensifying in the so-called ‘lithium triangle’ in Southern Bolivia, north western Argentina, and Northern Chile. Using arc…
Energy transitions in the shadow of a dictator
The global economy’s neoliberal era began in 1973 with a military coup in Chile lead by General Augusto Pinochet. Though the country returned to civilian rule in 1990, the dictatorship continues to determine much of Chile’s political economy, especially in extractive sectors, a legacy that also carries consequences for decarbonization in the 21 st century. As the latest stage of globalization, contemporary energy transitions offer an opportunity …
Climate action and populism of the left in Ecuador
There is little reason to expect developing countries to take costly local actions for global climate benefits. This is less so when populist governments of the left – who claim to speak for the poorest sectors of the population – must negotiate environmental protection and development. This article examines climate action in Ecuador, one of the poorest countries of Latin America, during a populist moment. We propose an analytical framework that …
We are a mining region’
Redundancies, layers, and dilemmas
An expanding array of transnational Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) standards has emerged to mitigate harms across critical minerals supply chains. This proliferation of international, private governance standards is interacting with domestic, public regulations guiding mining activity in resource rich states. When private and public requirements duplicate, overlap, or diverge they can create inconsistent processes, administrative bur…
Lithium’s Northern Buzz
In the “buzz” before extraction begins in earnest, landscapes, financial interests, and communities are reshaped in anticipation of economic windfalls—even if a project never materializes. The buzz around critical minerals necessary for decarbonization technologies adds the existential threat of the climate crisis to the financial, social, and political pressures that normally drive resource extraction. As this article illustrates in its study of…
Economic diplomacy, decarbonized
This article explores potential impacts of Canada’s National Critical Mineral Strategy on existing trade and aid dynamics with Latin America. Building on a historical analysis of Canada’s “extractives turn” in economic diplomacy with Latin America since the 1990s, we ask how emerging imperatives to secure extractive and downstream industries associated with global decarbonization are often at odds with hemispheric trade priorities, development ag…
Extractive transitions
This article makes the case for extractive transitions as an alternative or complementary framing of the means and consequences of existing proposals for decarbonization. Official energy transitions strategies in the Global North and Global South often promise a response to the climate crises accompanied by economic growth. According to this logic, new industries and infrastructure, electric vehicles, and battery manufacture have the ability to p…
Political science (19 works) · Law (16 works) · Politics (16 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Law (12 works) · Political economy (12 works) · Economics (8 works) · Mining and Resource Management (8 works) · Politics and Society in Latin America (6 works) · Business (5 works)