Production of absence through media representation: A case study on legitimacy and deliberation of a pulp mill dispute in southern Chile

Organising in defence of life: The emergence and dynamics of a territorial movement in Southern Chile

“…The structural constraints that these movements encounter limit their capacity to have an influence on the institutions that guide the cultural, economic and political spheres of life. Many movements encounter systemic exclusion from public politics in the discursive domain of civil society (Ehrnström-Fuentes, 2015, which can be traced back to the 'coloniality of power' (Quijano, 2000) of the modern world order. This power differential is upheld by the assumed superiority of modern over the colonial nonmodern, based on questions of race, class and the assumed universal applicability of the Cartesian knowledge system and Europe's historical processes on the rest of the world (Blaser, 2010;Mignolo, 2011;Quijano, 2000).…”

“…These universalising assumptions create separations between humans and objects, nature and culture, while organising the past, the present, and the future of societal life based on linear narratives of progress and development (Blaser, 2010). Thus, by structuring reality based on particular parameters, the power of coloniality effectively occludes and excludes the experiences of those deemed as inferior -and whose ways of being and knowing do not follow these same parameters -from the domains of the institutional politics in the public sphere (Ehrnström-Fuentes, 2015).…”

“…Mehuín is situated some 700 km south of Santiago and 70 km northwest of the town of Valdivia, on the coast of the Pacific Ocean. Since 1996, the village has been engaged in a protracted effort to defend the ocean waters from pollution from a planned 30-km pipeline transporting wastewater from a pulp mill in the nearby small town of San José de la Mariquina (Ehrnström-Fuentes, 2015Skewes and Guerra, 2004). In the initial stage of the struggles, the village of Mehuín challenged and defeated the forestry company Arauco, part of the largest Chilean holding company COPEC, in a territorial struggle without precedence in Chilean history.…”

Birthing extractivism: The role of the state in forestry politics and development in Uruguay

“…In addition to these interviews, recent media coverage (between 26 January and 20 February 2017) of the ongoing negotiations over a third pulp mill to be sited in central Uruguay has provided a rich source of data on how states engage with the forestry industry. It is, however, important to note that using mass media reports as empirical material may be misleading due to possible misrepresentations or the biases of editorial policy of the media house in question (Ehrnström-Fuentes, 2015). The same caveat applies to data from interviews with activists, as well as texts produced by MNCs, which are affected by what the text producer chooses to focus on, particularly in such a contested area as the role of the state in extractivism.…”

“…In terms of the governance of these types of operations, there is an urgent need to understand and conceptualise how extractivism come into being, or is birthed, as we choose to describe theactive interaction of nation states and global corporations (see also Borras et al, 2012;Duit, 2014;Sevilla-Buitrago, 2015;Chomsky, 2016), and how such relations affect the possibilities of citizens to engage in a meaningful debate on the desirability of these types of investments (Banerjee, 2017;Ehrnström-Fuentes, 2015;2016a;Scherer and Palazzo 2011;Valdivia 2015;Veltmeyer & Petras, 2014;Wilson et al, 2017). What is the role of states and their governments in the governance of contemporary extractive investments?…”