The Labor of Extraction in Latin America w/ Kristin Ciupa & Jeffery Webber
Release Date: 05/03/2024
Latin American Perspectives
En esta segunda parte de nuestra conversación sobre el número de enero de 2026 de Latin American Perspectives, "Political Ecology, Gender and the Environment in Latin America", vamos directamente a la investigación junto a cuatro de las autoras del dossier. La discusión, facilitada por la coeditora del número Mayarí Castillo (socióloga de la Universidad Mayor), reúne a Evelyn Arriagada, Paula Contreras, Beatriz Cid y Paula Acuña para explorar cómo el género funciona como categoría crítica en la ecología política y los estudios ambientales en América Latina. A lo largo del...
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Hosts Alexander Scott and Tomás Crowder-Taraborrelli speak with Vanessa Díaz and Petra R. Rivera-Rideau about their new book P FKN R: How Bad Bunny Became the Global Voice of Puerto Rican Resistance (Duke University Press, 2026). Díaz and Rivera-Rideau — creators of the "Bad Bunny Syllabus" — situate Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio within more than a century of Puerto Rican history and a much longer tradition of music as resistance. The conversation traces the political and economic conditions that shaped Bad Bunny's formative years: the end of Section 936, the debt crisis and the...
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Alexander Scott speaks with rural sociologist Andrew Smolski about U.S. imperialism and the long history of empire in Cuban development. Drawing on Smolski's archival research and his work on Cuban agriculture, the conversation traces how imperialism has shaped Cuba's capacity to develop across five centuries — from Spanish colonialism, the Haitian Revolution, and the rise of the sugar-slavery complex, through U.S. occupation and the Platt Amendment era, to a blockade now in its seventh decade — and asks what it would mean for development research to treat imperialism as a condition...
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Bryce Henson joins the pod to discuss his book Emergent Quilombos: Black Life and Hip Hop in Brazil (University of Texas Press, 2023). Drawing on ethnographic research in Salvador da Bahia, Henson explores Brazilian hip hop as a diasporic cultural and political movement rooted in Black radical traditions, anti-racist struggle, and collective community formation. Throughout the conversation, the group discusses the historical significance of quilombos in Brazil, the relationship between Blackness and political struggle, the role of hip hop as a form of “quilombismo,” and the...
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In this episode of the Latin American Perspectives Podcast, Alexander Scott speaks with historian and political scientist Steve Ellner about the changing nature of U.S. imperialism and the escalating political crisis in Venezuela. Drawing on Ellner’s recent work, the conversation examines sanctions, economic warfare, “hyper-imperialism,” the Venezuelan opposition, and the broader geopolitical tensions shaping Latin America today. Topics discussed include: Sanctions as a form of warfare Economic coercion and financial blockades U.S. policy toward Venezuela María Corina Machado and the...
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En este episodio del podcast de Latin American Perspectives, conversamos con Mayarí Castillo, socióloga de la Universidad Mayor y coeditora del número de enero de 2026, sobre los principales ejes que estructuran este nuevo dossier. A lo largo de la conversación, abordamos la ecología política como un marco para comprender la relación entre sociedad, naturaleza y poder en América Latina, y exploramos las raíces históricas de los conflictos socioambientales contemporáneos—desde el colonialismo y la formación de los Estados hasta el extractivismo y las crisis climáticas actuales....
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LAP coordinating editor Claudia Horn (King’s College London) joins the pod to discuss the September 2025 issue: Amazon Rainforest and Socio-Ecological Alternatives in Latin America. What is the Amazon—and how should we understand it beyond dominant environmental, state-centered, or extractivist narratives? Our conversation explores the concept of multiplicity as a way of rethinking the Amazon as a space of diverse social worlds, political struggles, and ways of life. We also examine the forces threatening these worlds, while highlighting the forms of resistance, collective...
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Part 2 of our interview with Felipe Antunes de Oliveira on his recent book Dependency and Crisis in Brazil and Argentina: A Critique of Market and State Utopias (2024). In this timely and theoretically rigorous work, Antunes de Oliveira examines why the two largest countries in South America fail to materialize the development they continually promise to achieve. Instead of approaching the topic from a policy-failure perspective, he focuses on what public debates reveal about “development” itself. Building on this, Antunes de Oliveira offers a theoretical and empirical critique...
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In this special two-part edition of Editors’ Choice, Felipe Antunes de Oliveira, joins us to discuss his recent book Dependency and Crisis in Brazil and Argentina: A Critique of Market and State Utopias (2024). In this timely and theoretically rigorous work, Antunes de Oliveira examines why the two largest countries in South America fail to materialize the development they continually promise to achieve. Instead of approaching the topic from a policy-failure perspective, he focuses on what public debates reveal about “development” itself. Building on this, Antunes de Oliveira...
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En este episodio, conversamos con Javier Campo, editor de Una historia del cine documental argentino: Tomo 1 (1896–1989) y Tomo 2 (1990-2024), publicados por Prometeo Editorial. La charla recorre la evolución del cine documental argentino desde la era del cine mudo hasta los años de la dictadura y la transición democrática, mostrando cómo distintos realizadores han utilizado el documental para abordar temas de memoria, resistencia y activismo. Javier Campo reflexiona sobre el proceso de investigación y edición detrás de este ambicioso proyecto histórico, y sobre el papel fundamental...
info_outlineProfessor’s Kristin Ciupa and Jeffery Webber join the podcast to discuss their new co-edited volume The Labor of Extraction in Latin America that was recently published by Rowman & Littlefield as part of the "Latin American Perspectives in the Classroom" series.
This edited volume traces the power of labor in extractive sectors in Latin America starting in the 1980s and shows how labor shapes national export sectors, economies, politics, and societies more broadly. Bringing together a team of international experts who look at labor in several extractive sectors—including oil and gas, mining and agriculture, and migrant labor, the volume presents a variety of viewpoints and case studies, exploring themes of the strategic organizing potential of extractive workers, the rise of informal labor and its impact on organizing and worker solidarity, and migrant labor-power as extraction.
Kristin Ciupa is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Regina and the author of the forthcoming book The Political Economy of Oil in Venezuela: Class Conflict, the State, and the World Market.
Jeffery R. Webber is a professor of politics at York University, Toronto. He is the author or co-author of five books, and co-editor of two books. Most recently, he co-authored The Impasse of the Latin American Left (Duke 2022) with scholars Franck Gaudichaud and Massimo Modonesi.
The Labor of Extraction in Latin America is available for purchase through Rowman & Littlefield at https://rowman.com/ISBN/9781538187548/The-Labor-of-Extraction-in-Latin-America
For more information about Latin American Perspectives, our podcasts, and guests, please contact latampodcasts@gmail.com or lap@ucr.edu