In the Spirit of Oil: Unintended Flows and Leaky Lives in Northeastern Ecuador

Associate Professor Stine Krøijer has recently contributed to the book Indigenous Life Projects and Extractivism: Ethnographies from South America with the chapter 'In the Spirit of Oil: Unintended Flows and Leaky Lives in Northeastern Ecuador.'

Exploring indigenous life projects in encounters with extractivism, the book discusses how current turbulences actualize questions of indigeneity, difference, and ontological dynamics in the Andes and Amazonia. While studies of extractivism in South America often focus on wider national and international politics, this contribution instead provides ethnographic explorations of indigenous politics, perspectives, and worlds, revealing loss and suffering as well as creative strategies to mediate the extralocal. Seeking to avoid conceptual imperialism or the imposition of exogenous categories, the chapters are grounded in the respective authors’ long-standing field research. The authors examine the reactions (from resistance to accommodation), consequences (from anticipation to rubble), and materials (from fossil fuel to water) diversely related to extractivism in rural and urban settings. How can Amerindian strategies to preserve localized communities in extractivist contexts contribute to ways of thinking otherwise?

In her chapter, Stine Krøijer explores the following question: How does a community uphold a sense of control over their lives in the encounter with extractivist policies?

Stine Krøijer, In the Spirit of Oil: Unintended Flows and Leaky Lives in Northeastern Ecuador, Indigenous Life Projects and Extractivism: Ethnographies from South America, October 2018.