Amazonian quilombolas and the technopolitics of aluminum

Bibliographic Data

ID2391059
AuthorsAníbal Arregui (University of Rostock, Rostock, Germany), Aníbal García Arregui (0000-0001-6040-1269, University of Rostock, corresponding author)
Year2015
Volume20
Issue3
Pages249-272
Publication date2015-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Material Culture (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1359-1835 • E-ISSN: 1460-3586
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1359183515578937
OpenAlexW2111369319
LanguageEN
Citations received9
References cited36

By drawing on field research, this article suggests that the impact of an aluminum mine on its neighboring quilombola communities can be analyzed from at least two interconnected technopolitical scales. The first relates to the anatomo-political discipline that the mine imposes over the body of its workers as well as to its inhibiting effect on the traditional body techniques of the populations that surround it. The second stresses a mine's ecological governmentality that naturalizes the Amazonian environment and downplays quilombola sociotechnical infrastructures. The term technopolitics is proposed as a critical reading on biopolitics that ethnographically highlights the connection between the individual body and the environment as example of the entanglement of the bios (political, qualified life) and a technologically affected zoe, or "bare life

Amazon rainforest · Amazonian · Biopower · Ethnography · Field (mathematics · Governmentality · Political science · Politics · Reading (process · Sociology · Sociotechnical system · Amazonian Archaeology and Ethnohistory · Anthropology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Water Governance and Infrastructure · Ecology

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