Chinese contract labor, the corporeal rift, and ecological imperialism in Peru’s nineteenth-century guano boom

This article introduces the concept of penal extractivism in the punishment and society literature. We define penal extractivism as the punitive strategies that a state implements to safeguard extractive industries from citizens’ contention. This concept addresses the limitations of categories like criminalization, protest policing, social control, and labour discipline while bridging the gap between punishment studies and research on extractive industries. Additionally, we draw upon evidence of the Espinar mining conflict in Peru to explain five punitive strategies the state uses to handle protests: (1) off-duty policing and critical assets legislation, (2) state of emergency declarations, (3) police or prosecutorial notes against environmental defenders, (4) criminal indictments, and (5) the transferring of criminal cases to distant jurisdictions. Based on our findings, we argue that penal extractivism is a dynamic and ambivalent project that targets marginalized rural populations. The state partially deters mobilizations but fails to address the underlying social unrest, reinforcing the conditions that perpetuate mining conflicts. This in-depth within-case analysis examines the relationship between punishment and extractivism in the global context of contemporary social mobilizations.

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Guano and the Rise of the American Empire

Betancourt

2024

Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World

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Ecological imperialism refers to the center’s robbery of nature from the periphery, emphasizing the ecological dimension of trade, often overshadowed by monetary concerns. Examining historical cases like the nineteenth-century guano trade between Peru and Europe reveals this dynamic, wherein the involvement of the United States has been often overlooked. Utilizing archival data from British, French, Peruvian, and U.S. sources, I demonstrate how guano served as an ecological foundation for U.S. expansion overseas starting in the 1850s. This includes the significance of guano islands as the first U.S. overseas territories, considerations of annexing South American islands for guano, and the role of guano in partly inspiring the construction of the Panama Canal. Overall, the guano trade exemplifies an imperial-ecological process that reshaped global legal, geopolitical, and trade systems. Additionally, I discuss the contemporary relevance of this history, particularly concerning lithium, emphasizing the importance of prioritizing ecology in center-periphery analyses.

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Chinese contract labor, the corporeal rift, and ecological imperialism in Peru’s nineteenth-century guano boom

Cited by 3 publications

References 33 publications

The Early History of China and Taiwan in Latin America: Cuba and Peru from 1837 to 1971

The Early History of China and Taiwan in Latin America: Cuba and Peru from 1837 to 1971

Penal extractivism: A qualitative study on punishment and extractive industries in Peru

Guano and the Rise of the American Empire

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