Groundwater Politics
Advanced Extractivism and Slow Resistance
Format:Hardback
Publisher:Berghahn Books
Published:1st Mar '25
Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

The mining industry is an expanding socio-ecological and political problem worldwide, not least in Atacameño-Likanantay (Indigenous) territories in the hyper-arid Salar de Atacama, Chile. Groundwater Politics addresses the social, technical and political conditions it calls ‘advanced extractivism’ to reveal how groundwater extraction sustains both ecological damage and mining economies. It richly describes the area's copper and lithium industries as historically linked with Indigenous communities and their ecological and economic futures. Based on over a decade of ethnographic research, the book casts community strategies to control water and territory as 'slow resistance’, the structural and multifaceted practices that generate a material future amid potential resource exhaustion.
“This book is timely and sophisticated. It is one of only a few social science or humanities studies of groundwaters and depletion, which is a pressing global problem.” • Casey Walsh, University of California, Santa Barbara
“This book is ethnographically rich, develops a strong line of analysis that adds to the current work in the field, and addresses a well-recognized and important topic.” • Josiah Heyman, University of Texas, El Paso
ISBN: 9781805398820
Dimensions: unknown
Weight: unknown
278 pages