Temporalities in Friction: Planning and Temporal Violence in the Ecuadorian Amazon
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
In the light of global challenges like climate change, the energy transition, and biodiversity loss, the possibility of a future ‘otherwise’ seems to shrink. The Amazon denominated “the lungs of the Earth” is a focal point in these discussions as its future is not just important to the (Indigenous) people who live there, but to humanity itself. As the past and the present of the Amazon are rather marked by violent encounters and an intensification of extractive endeavors, this article considers how these violent structures persist across time, but also how they can be broken up and transformed. Therefore, the concept of “temporal violence” is introduced, on the one hand, to grasp the enduring structures of violence that creep into future timespaces through (state) planning, and, on the other hand, to underline that this violence is just one possible future out of a multiplicity of futures – it potentially can be temporary. Merging the anthropological insights of the experiences of Indigenous grassroots organizations in planning their futures with critical futures studies, this article explores the possibilities of alternative futures to materialize. To this end, planning as a mechanism of power with both violent and subversive qualities is discussed. The central inquiry raised by this article is, hence, how planning can be an instrument for decolonization, challenging and altering relations of violence.
Downloads
Metrics
Article Details
References
Abram, S. & Weszkalnys, G. (2011) Introduction - Anthropologies of Planning: Temporality, Imagination and Ethnography. Focaal Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology, 61, pp. 3–18.
Abram, S. (2014) The time it takes: temporalities of planning. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, pp. 129–147.
Ahmann, C. (2018) It’s exhausting to create an event out of nothing: Slow Violence and the Manipulation of Time. Cultural Anthropology, 33(1), pp. 142–171.
Alarcón, P. (2020) Latin American Environmental Thinking Revisited: The Polyphony of Buen Vivir. Diálogos: Revista Electrónica de Historia, 21(2), pp. 215–236.
Altmann, P. (2012) Interculturalidad y plurinacionalidad como conceptos decoloniales - Colonialidad y discurso del movimiento indígena en el Ecuador. In H. Cairo Carou, A. Cabezas González, T. Mallo Gutiérrez, E. Del Campo García & J. Carpio Martín (Eds.), Actas Congreso Internacional América Latina: La Autonomía de una región (pp. 131–138) HAL.
Altmann, P. (2018) Tierra o territorio: La constitución de un actor político por el movimiento indígena. J. M. Waldmüller & P. Altmann (Eds.), Territorialidades otras: Visiones alternativas de la tierra y del territorio desde el Ecuador (pp. 213–239) Quito: Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar/Ediciones La Tierra.
Andy Alvarado, P., Calapucha Andy, C., Calapucha Cerda, L., López Shiguango, H., Shiguango Calapucha, K., Tanguila Andy, A., Tanguila Andy, D. & Yasacama Aranda, C. (2012) Sabiduría de la Cultura Kichwa de la Amazonía Ecuatoriana. Cuenca: Universidad de Cuenca.
Appadurai, A. (2013) The future as Cultural Fact. London/New York, UK/USA: Verso.
Bear, L. (2016) Time as Technique. Annual Review of Anthropology, 45(1), pp. 487–502.
Bourdieu, P. (1977) Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1979) Symbolic Power. Critique of Anthropology, 4(13-14), 77–85.
Bourdieu, P. (2002) Language and Symbolic Power. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. (Original work published 1991)
Bourdieu, P. & Passeron, J. (2002) La reproducción: Elementos para una teoría del sistema de enseñanza. Madrid, Spain: Editorial Popular.
Brownill, S. (2017) Assembling neighborhoods: topologies of power and reshaping of planning. In S. Brownill & Q. Bradley (eds.), Localism and Neighborhood Planning: Power to the people?, (pp. 145-163) Bristol: Policy Press.
Brunner, C. (2020) Epistemische Gewalt. Wissen und Herrschaft in der kolonialen Moderne. Bielefeld, Germany: transcript
Bryant, R. & Knight, D. M. (2019) The Anthropology of the Future. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Bulkeley, H. (2005) Reconfiguring environmental governance: Towards a politics of scales and networks. Political Geography, 24, pp. 875–902.
Carmichael, S. (1968) Black Power. In D. Cooper (ed.), The Dialectics of Liberation. London: Penguin.
Civila, S., Romero-Rodríguez, L. M. & Aguaded, I. (2021) Symbolic-discursive violence and new media: An epistemological perspective. Catalan Journal of Communication & Cultural Studies, 13(1), pp. 43–61.
Collins, S. G. (2008) All Tomorrow’s Cultures: Anthropological Engagements with the Future. New York: Berghahn Books.
Collins, S. G. (2020) Review: The Anthropology of the Future by Rebecca Bryant and Daniel M. Knight. Anthropological Quarterly, 93(2), pp. 231-236.
Crenshaw, K.W. (1989) Demarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics. University of Chicago Legal Forum, 1 (8), pp. 139-167.
Crutzen, P. J. & Stoermer, E. F. (2021) The ‘Anthropocene’. In S. Benner, G. Lax, P. J. Crutzen, U. Pöschl, J. Lelieveld, H. G. Brauch (eds.), Paul J. Crutzen and the Anthropocene: A New Epoch in Earth’s History (pp. 19–21) Cham: Springer. (Original work published 2000)
Curley, A. (2021) Resources is just another word for colonialism. In M. Himley, E. Havice, G. Valdivia (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Critical Resource Geography (1), pp. 79–91. New York: Routledge.
Datta, A. (2017) On Uncertain Ground: Displaced Kashmiri Pandits in Jammu and Kashmir. New Delhi, India: Oxford University Press.
Davies, T. (2022) Slow violence and toxic geographies: ‘Out of sight’ to whom? EPC: Politics and Space, 40(2), pp. 409–427.
Deleuze, G. (1994) Difference and Repetition. New York: Columbia University Press.
El Universo (2022, May 24) Informe a la nación del presidente, Guillermo Lasso [Video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkNcQCztU1U
Fabian, J. (2014) Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object. New York: Columbia University Press.
Foucault, M. (1978) Governmentality. (Lecture at the Collège de France, Feb. 1, 1978) In G. Burchell, C. Gordon & P. Miller (eds.), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Hemel Hempstead: Harvester
Foucault, M. (1982) The Subject and Power. Critical Inquiry, 8(4), pp. 777–795.
Foucault, M. (ed) (1984) The Foucault reader. New York, USA: Pantheon Books.
Foucault, M. (1990) The History of Sexuality: An Introduction. London: Penguin Books. (Original work published 1973)
Galtung, J. (1969) Violence, peace, and peace research. Journal of Peace Research, 6(3), pp. 167–191.
Galtung, J. (1985) Twenty-Five Years of Peace Research: Ten Challenges and Some Responses. Journal of Peace Research, 22(2), pp. 141–158.
Galtung, J. (1990) Cultural violence. Journal of Peace Research, 27(3), pp. 291–305.
Galván-Álvarez, E. (2010) Epistemic Violence and Retaliation: The Issue of Knowledge in Mother India. Atlantis, 32(2), pp. 11–26.
González Casanova, P. (1969) Sociología de la explotación. CLACSO.
Grefa Andi, F. R. (2014) Maccuruchu: Acercamiento al conocimiento indígena y la planificación en la Amazonía norte del Ecuador. Quito: Abya Yala.
Gudynas, E. (2012) Estado compensador y nuevos extractivismos: Las ambivalencias del progresismo sudamericano. Nueva Sociedad, 237, pp. 128-146.
Guyer, J. I. (2007) Prophecy and the near future: Thoughts on macroeconomic, evangelical, and punctuated time. American Ethnologist, 34(3), pp. 409–421.
Haraway, D., et al. (2016) Anthropologists Are Talking – About the Anthropocene. Ethnos, 81(3), pp. 535–564.
Hibbard, M. (2022) Indigenous Planning: From Forced Assimilation to Self-determination. Journal of Planning Literature, 37(1), pp. 17–27.
Hicks, D. A. & Mallet, S. (2019) Temporal violence. In D. A. Hicks & S. Mallet (eds.), Lande: The Calais 'Jungle' and Beyond (pp. 47–66) Bristol University Press.
Jojola, T.S. (2008) Indigenous Planning-An Emerging Context. Canadian Journal of Urban Research, 17, pp. 37-47.
Jojola, T. & Shirley, M. (2017) Indigenous Planning. In Kenny, S., McGrath, B., Phillips, R. (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Community Development: Perspectives from Around the Globe, pp. 324–339. New York, USA: Routledge
Jolly, D. & Thompson-Fawcett, M. (2021) Enhancing Indigenous impact assessment: Lessons from Indigenous planning theory. Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 87 (106541), pp. 1-9.
Jones, T., Cox, S. & Cozens, P. (2016) Unsettling planning in Perth: Indigenous planning in a boom. In S. Biermann, D., Olaru & V. Paul (eds.), Planning Boomtown and Beyond. Perth, WA.: UWA Publishing
Karl, T. L. (1997) The paradox of plenty: Oil booms and petro-states. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Koch, N., & Perreault, T. (2019) Resource nationalism. Progress in Human Geography, 43(4), 611–631.
Koselleck, R. (2004) Futures Past: On the Semantics of Historical Time. New York: Columbia University Press.
Lalander, R. & Lembke, M. (2018) Territorialidad, indigeneidad y diálogo intercultural en Ecuador: Dilemas y desafíos en el proyecto del Estado plurinacional. In J. M. Waldmüller & P. Altmann (Eds.), Territorialidades otras: Visiones alternativas de la tierra y del territorio desde el Ecuador, pp. 213–239. Quito: Universidad Andina Simón Bolívar: Ediciones La Tierra.
Lane, M. B. & Hibbard, M. (2005) Doing It for Themselves. Transformative Planning by Indigenous Peoples. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 25(2), pp. 172–184.
Lu, F., Valdivia, G. & Silva, N. L. (2017) Oil, Revolution, and Indigenous Citizenship in Ecuadorian Amazonia. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.
Lyall, A. (2021) Resistence in retrospect: The multi-temporality of extractivism in the Amazon. Íconos Revista de Ciencias Sociales, 69, pp. 17–34.
Maldonado-Torres, N. (2007) On the Coloniality of Being: Contributions to the development of a concept. Cultural Studies, 21(2), pp. 240–270.
Matunga, H.P. (2013) Theorizing Indigenous planning. In Matunga, H. P., Walker, R., Jojola, T., et al. (eds.), Reclaiming indigenous planning, pp. 3-32. Montreal, Canada: McGill-Queen's University Press.
Mauch, C. (2019) Slow Hope: Rethinking Ecologies of Crisis and Fear. RCC Perspectives: Transformations in Environment and Society, 1, pp. 3–43.
Munn, N. (1983) Gawan Kula: Spatiotemporal control and the symbolism of influence. In Leach, J. W., Leach, E. (eds.), The Kula: New perspectives on Massim exchange, pp. 277–308, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Munn, N. (1992) The cultural anthropology of time: a critical essay. Annual Review of Anthropology, 21, pp. 93–123.
Nixon, R. (2011) Slow violence and the environmentalism of the poor. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
O’Brien, S. (2016) We thought the world was makeable: Scenario planning and postcolonial fiction. Globalizations, 13(3), pp. 329-344.
Ossewaarde, M. (2017) Unmasking scenario planning: The colonization of the future in the ‘Local Governments of the Future’ program. Futures, (93), pp. 80-88.
Österlin, C. & Raitio, K. (2020) Fragmented Landscapes and Planscapes—The Double Pressure of Increasing Natural Resource Exploitation on Indigenous Sámi Lands in Northern Sweden. Resources, 9(104), pp. 1-27.
Parsons, K. A. (2007) Structural Violence and Power. Peace Review, 19(2), pp. 173–181.
Peters, S. (2019) Rentengesellschaften: Der lateinamerikanische (Neo-)Extraktivismus im transregionalen Vergleich. Studien zu Lateinamerika: Band 34. Nomos.
Piot, C. (2010) Nostalgia for the Future: West Africa after the Cold War. Chicago, USA: University of Chicago Press.
Pipyrou, S. and Sorge, A. (2021) Emergent Axioms of Violence: Toward an Anthropology of Post-Liberal Modernity. Anthropological Forum, 31(3), pp. 225–240.
Porter, L. (2017) What is the Work of Non-Indigenous People in the Service of a Decolonizing Agenda? Planning Theory & Practice, 18(4), pp. 650-653.
Porter, L., Matunga, H., Viswanathan, L., et al. (2017) Indigenous Planning: from Principles to Practice/A Revolutionary Pedagogy of/for Indigenous Planning/Settler-Indigenous Relationships as Liminal Spaces in Planning Education and Practice/Indigenist Planning/What is the Work of Non-Indigenous People in the Service of a Decolonizing Agenda?/Supporting Indigenous Planning in the City/Film as a Catalyst for Indigenous Community Development/Being Ourselves and Seeing Ourselves in the City: Enabling the Conceptual Space for Indigenous Urban Planning/Universities Can Empower the Next Generation of Architects, Planners, and Landscape Architects in Indigenous Design and Planning. Planning Theory & Practice, 18(4), pp. 639–666.
Povinelli, E. (2012) The Will to be Otherwise/The Effort of Endurance. South Atlantic Quarterly, 111(3), pp. 453–475.
Prusak, S. Y., Walker, R. & Innes, R. (2016) Toward Indigenous Planning? First Nation Community Planning in Saskatchewan, Canada. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 36(4), pp. 440–450.
Quijano, A. (2000) Colonialidad del poder, eurocentrismo y América Latina. In E. Lander (Ed.), La colonialidad del saber: eurocentrismo y ciencias sociales. Perspectivas latinoamericanas, pp. 201–246. CLACSO.
Riner, R. D. (1987) Doing future research – anthropologically. Futures, pp. 311-328.
Rojas Sasse, E. (2022, January 31) Derrames de petróleo en Ecuador: un mal crónico. DW. https://www.dw.com/es/derrames-de-petr%C3%B3leo-en-ecuador-un-mal-cr%C3%B3nico/g-60615653
Rosenberg, D. (ed.) (2005) Histories of the future. Durham: Duke University Press.
Sahlins, M. (1985) Islands of History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Sánchez, F. & Polga-Hecimovich, J. (2019) The Tools of Institutional Change under Post-Neoliberalism: Rafael Correa’s Ecuador, Journal of Latin American Studies, 51, pp. 379-408.
Sandercook, L. (2004) Commentary: indigenous planning and the burden of colonialism. Planning Theory & Practice, 5(1), pp. 118-124.
Schavelzon, S. (2015) Plurinacionalidad y vivir bien/buen vivir: Dos conceptos leídos desde Bolivia y Ecuador post-constituyentes. Abya Yala.
Scheper-Hughes, N. & Bourgeois, P. (2004) Introduction: Making Sense of Violence. In N. Scheper-Hughes & P. Bourgois (Eds.), Violence in war and peace, pp. 1–32, Blackwell.
Schwab, J. (2023) La lucha continua: A Presentist Lens on Social Protest in Ecuador. Social Inclusion, 11(2), pp. 198-211.
Schwab, J. & Combariza, N. (in press) La planificación en tiempos de crisis climática: consolidación del modelo de desarrollo extractivista en la Amazonía Ecuatoriana. CALAS.
Silveira, M., Moreano, M., Romero, N., Murillo, D., Ruales, G. & Torres, N. (2017) Geografías de sacrificio y geografías de esperanza: tensiones territoriales en el Ecuador plurinacional. Journal of Latin American Geography, 16(1), pp. 69–92.
Ssorin-Chaikov, N. (2017) Two Lenins: A Brief Anthropology of Time. Chicago, USA: Hau Books.
Textor, R. (2005) The World Ahead: An Anthropologist Anticipates the Future/Margaret Mead. New York: Berghahn Books.
Tsing, A. (2005) Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Princeton/Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Valentine, D. (2012) Exit strategy: Profit, cosmology, and the future of humans in space. Anthropological Quarterly, 85(4), pp. 1045–67.
Van Asselt, M., Faas, N., Van der Molen, F. & Veenman, S. (2010) Exploring Futures For Policymaking: Synthesis of ‘Out of sight: Exploring futures for policymaking’. WRR/Scientific Council for Government Policy.
Walker, R. (2017) Supporting Indigenous Planning in the City. Planning Theory & Practice, 18(4), pp. 653-655.
Walker, R., Jojola, T. E. D., Natcher, D. (2013) Reclaiming indigenous planning. Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press.
Weigert, K. M. (2008) Structural Violence. In G. Fink (ed.) Stress of War, Conflict and Disaster (pp. 126-137) Oxford/San Diego: Academic Press Elsevier.
Whitten, N. E. & Whitten, D. (2011) Histories of the present: people and power in Ecuador. Illinois Press.
Yinon, D. (2016) Change’s Order: On Deleuze’s Notion of Time. In Dolev, Y. & Roubach, M. (eds.), Cosmological and Psychological Time (pp. 203–218.) Cham: Springer International Publishing.