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Research article2019Peer reviewed

Colonial extractive sentipensar: Emotional geographies of extraction in Gulumapu, the Mapuche territory in southern Chile

Gonzalez-Hidalgo, Marien; Lopez-Dietz, Sandra; Pacheco-Pailahual, Stefanie

Abstract

In this paper we analyze the geographies of extraction through the lens of emotional political ecology. We show how extractivism in southern Chile functions as an emotional project to ensure capital accumulation. Our evidence shows how the State and the private sector produce and reproduce pain to local communities and also, offer "painkillers" to ensure forestry extractivism in the territory. This suggests that extractivism is, nowadays, a sentipensante project, in which the use of emotions by the State and private capital updates and deepens the historical colonial tendencies in the Mapuche territories of southern Chile.

Keywords

Extractivism; colonialism; emotional political ecology; tree plantations; Mapuche; Chile

Published in

Journal of Latin American Geography
2019, Volume: 18, number: 3, pages: 85-109
Publisher: CONFERENCE LATIN AMER GEOGRAPHERS