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plss_2024_staminaandebodimentofexpertisetransnationalactivism
Journal article

Stamina and the embodiment of expertise: resources of transnational activism to counter corporate slow violence

BP2-STS

  • 2024
Published in:
  • Zeitschrift für Friedens- und Konfliktforschung. - Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2024, vol. 13, no. 1, p. 145-165
Political ecology
Corporate slow violence
Transnational activism
Hydroelectric energy production
North-South linkages
Stamina
English Analyses from political ecology and other disciplines show on the one hand how projects of hydroelectric power production can lead to situations of corporate slow violence. On the other hand, contributions of the same disciplines analyse how transnational activism can change shape, course, and power structures in environmental conflicts. My contribution brings together these debates, which have so far been conducted separately, by analysing the conflict around a run-of-the-river hydroelectric power plant in rural Ecuador. The power plant has been backed by a legitimising discourse of contributing to sustainable non-carbon-based solutions to global climate change. Despite this good image, the company ignored the national legislation and the knowledge of the local population about their river, as well as their needs, and thus involved them in a situation of corporate slow violence. Parts of the community subsequently joined with activists from the U.S. and formed an NGO to convert the physical protest-dominated resistance strategy into one of scientific and legal activism. My analysis shows how this case of corporate slow violence was confronted by these activists mobilising a variety of resources, among them two that are not taken into account in the relevant literature so far, namely the necessary time, residency, and stamina to cope with the violence, and the use of the embodiment of expertise of the white colonialist other as a strategic tool to change power structures in the region.
Faculty
Faculté des lettres et des sciences humaines
Department
Département des sciences sociales
Language
  • English
Classification
Anthropology, ethnography
License
CC BY
Open access status
hybrid
Identifiers
Persistent URL
https://folia.unifr.ch/unifr/documents/331237
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