The Politics of Precarity: Spaces of Extractivism, Violence, and Suffering

210 Pages·2021·13.697 MB·English

by  Gediminas Lesutis

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Interventions
THE POLITICS OF PRECARITY
SPACES OF EXTRACTIVISM, VIOLENCE, AND SUFFERING
Gediminas Lesutis
This theoretically sophisticated and empirically rich book illustrates
the blatant injustice of laying lives to waste and making precarity a con-
dition of life only to serve the interests of global capital. The Politics of
Precarity is a brilliant reflection on the violence of capitalist abstraction
of space, destroying lived spaces and the lives of real people, rendering
them redundant, dispossessed, and displaced. Exposing how the extrac-
tion of coal for global commodity markets depends on the destruction
of local lives, Lesutis urges the reader to think politically about the vio-
lence inherent in such an economic order.
Mustafa Dikeç,
Professor of Urban Studies, Malmö University, and author of Urban
Rage and Space, Politics and Aesthetics.
This exceptionally clearly argued and elegant book exposes how capi-
talism-driven precarity simultaneously creates multidimensional pov-
erty and produces imaginaries of capitalist development as the sole
pathway to a better life. Approaching precarity in a highly original way
as a configuration of space, violence, and politics, and starkly detailing
its destructive real-life impact, the book deserves a wide, global reader-
ship beyond those interested in mining, Africa, or capitalism.
Bjørn Enge Bertelsen,
Professor of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen,
and author of Violent Becomings.
Empirically rich and theoretically sophisticated, this is a very timely
and hugely insightful intervention that very productively draws on a
very significant body of ethnographic research from the epicentre of
the extractive boom in contemporary Mozambique. It sheds new light
on scholarly understandings of precarity, resistance, dispossession, and
development, and is a must-read for scholars interested in these themes.
Marcus Power,
Professor of Human Geography, University of Durham,
and author of Geopolitics and Development.
Gediminas Lesutis’ book exquisitely excavates how the politics of extrac-
tivism parallels the making of profound forms of exclusion and margin-
alisation. The precarity of everyday life in Cateme, Mozambique, and
its embodied practices of violence, resistance, and liveability painfully
demonstrate how precarious lives become constituted in contemporary
global politics, and mirror what is unfolding in other parts of the world.
The book is key reading for those concerned with how geographies of
extractive capitalism produce precarity and what can be done about it.
Erik Swyngedouw,
Professor of Human Geography, University of Manchester,
and author of Promises of the Political and Liquid Power.
Lesutis has written a theoretically sophisticated, empirically rich,
and politically passionate account of life in a mining province in
Mozambique. He uses locals’ accounts of precarity to explore broader
questions of violence, resistance, and liveability in the modern capi-
talist era – providing a powerful example of how apparently marginal
African experiences can help us understand the core questions of inter-
national politics and capital.
Julia Gallagher,
Professor of African Politics, SOAS, University of London,
and author of Zimbabwe’s International Relations.
Gediminas Lesutis’ book provides a fresh and innovative contribution
to current theoretical engagements with precarity politics and space
through an empirically rich examination of the extractive mining
industry in Mozambique. His thoughtful insights elucidate the intrica-
cies of human and environmental precarity. A must read for students
and scholars interested in understanding the complex politics of vio-
lence, human precarity, and environmental harm endemic to extractive
capitalism.
Jennifer L. Fluri,
Professor of Human Geography, University of Colorado-Boulder,
and co-author of Carpetbaggers of Kabul and
Other American Afghan Entanglements.
The Politics of Precarity
Based on critical theory and ethnographic research, this book explores how
intensifying geographies of extractive capitalism shape human lives and
transformative politics in marginal areas of the global economy.
Engaging the work of Judith Butler, Henri Lefebvre, and Jacques Rancière
with ethnographic research on social and political effects of mining-induced
dispossession in Mozambique, in the book, Lesutis theorises how precarity
unfolds as a spatially constituted condition of everyday life given over to
the violence of capital. Going beyond labour relations, or governance of life
in liberal democracies, that are typically explored in the literature on pre-
carity, the book shows how dispossessed people are subjected to structural,
symbolic, and direct modalities of violence; this simultaneously constitutes
their suffering and ceaseless desire, however implausible, to be included in
abstract space of extractivism. As a result, despite the multifarious violence
that it engenders, extractive capital accumulation is sustained even in the
margins, historically excluded from contingently lived imaginaries of a
“good life” promised by capitalism.
Presenting this theorisation of precarity as a framework on, and a cri-
tique of, the contemporary politics of (un)liveability, the book speaks to key
debates about precarity, dispossession, resistance, extractivism, and devel-
opment in several disciplines, especially political geography, IPE, global
politics, and critical theory. It will also be of interest to scholars in develop-
ment studies, critical political economy, and African politics.
Gediminas Lesutis is a Research Associate at the University of Cambridge
and a Research Fellow at Darwin College, the United Kingdom, and an
incoming Marie Curie Research Fellow at the University of Amsterdam,
the Netherlands. His research is in the areas of political geography and
global political economy, particularly in regard to everyday life, dispos-
session, extractivism, mega-infrastructures, bio- and necro-political power,
and the politics of development across Sub-Saharan Africa. Gediminas
has published peer-reviewed research articles in African Affairs, Geoforum,
Political Geography, Urban Geography, Transactions of the Institute of
British Geographers, and others.
Interventions
The Series provides a forum for innovative and interdisciplinary work that
engages with alternative critical, post-structural, feminist, postcolonial,
psychoanalytic and cultural approaches to international relations and
global politics. In our first 5 years we have published 60 volumes.
We aim to advance understanding of the key areas in which scholars
working within broad critical post-structural traditions have chosen to
make their interventions, and to present innovative analyses of important
topics. Titles in the series engage with critical thinkers in philosophy, sociol-
ogy, politics and other disciplines and provide situated historical, empirical
and textual studies in international politics.
We are very happy to discuss your ideas at any stage of the project: just
contact us for advice or proposal guidelines. Proposals should be submitted
directly to the Series Editors:
• Jenny Edkins ([email protected]) and
• Nick Vaughan-Williams ([email protected]).
‘As Michel Foucault has famously stated, “knowledge is not made for under-
standing; it is made for cutting” In this spirit The Edkins - Vaughan-Williams
Interventions series solicits cutting edge, critical works that challenge main-
stream understandings in international relations. It is the best place to con-
tribute post disciplinary works that think rather than merely recognize and
affirm the world recycled in IR’s traditional geopolitical imaginary.’
The International Organization for Migration in North Africa
Making International Migration Management
Inken Bartels
Disappearances and Police Killings in Contemporary Brazil
The Politics of Life and Death
Sabrina Villenave
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/
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The Politics of Precarity
Spaces of Extractivism, Violence,
and Suffering
Gediminas Lesutis
First published 2022
by Routledge
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© 2022 Gediminas Lesutis
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ISBN: 9781032014227 (hbk)
ISBN: 9781032014234 (pbk)
ISBN: 9781003178569 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003178569
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Contents
List of figures and tables viii
Acknowledgements ix
Abbreviations xi
Introduction 1
1 Theorising precarity: Space, violence, politics 22
2 Colonial, postcolonial, neoliberal precarisation 50
3 Spaces of structural violence: Precarity as exclusion 72
4 Spaces of symbolic violence: Precarity as inclusion 98
5 Spaces of coping: Precarity as abandonment 125
Conclusion 155
Bibliography 168
Index 194
List of figures and table
Figures
3.1 The new railway link built by Vale. 76
3.2 Sites of original and resettlement villages in the province of Tete. 82
3.3 The Cateme welcome board. 91
3.4 Artisanal brick-making. 92
4.1 Development in Cateme as presented by Vale. 102
4.2 Type of common housing before the resettlement, as
presented by Vale. 104
4.3 Typical cuisines before the resettlement, as presented by Vale. 104
4.4 Type of spatial organisation in rural areas before the
resettlement area. 106
4.5 Type of spatial organisation in peri-urban areas before the
resettlement. 106
4.6 General plan of Cateme, prepared by Vale in 2011
(as in Pedro 2011, 52). 107
4.7 Housing in Cateme. 109
4.8 New houses being built in Cateme. 112
4.9 Non-functioning water pumps in Cateme. 113
4.10 The Model Farm’s agricultural fields, no longer cultivated. 114
5.1 Vale mining concession. 134
5.2 Demolished living infrastructures in Chipanga. 135
5.3 Makeshift house in Chipanga. 136
5.4 Abandoned houses in Cateme. 142
5.5 Looted windows. 143
5.6 Living conditions of the population leaving Cateme. 147
Table
5.1 The abandonment of the houses in Cateme (author data). 144
Acknowledgements
Researching and writing this book has been a truly enriching experience in
my development as a scholar; a number of people accompanied me along
the way that it has taken me to bring the text to its present form. I write
their names here as acknowledgement, knowing that mere mention does not
suffice as thanks.
Chapter drafts or versions of the argument in some form were read
and commented upon by Carl Death, Japhy Wilson, Marcus Power, Erik
Swyngedouw, Andreja Zevnik, Amanda Hammar, Laars Bur, Greig
Charnock, Jon Las Heras, and David Harrison. Two anonymous reviewers
for Routledge, along with the series editors, also offered productive com-
ments that improved the text. I am grateful for all their time and help; all
errors, as always, remain mine.
The fieldwork research central to the book was made possible by many
kind people I was fortunate to meet in Mozambique. I am especially grate-
ful to Laura Lima for all-round support and to Delvino for his rigorous
research assistance in Cateme. And Sara, Vanessa, and Tiago – for helping
me to see Mozambique from a number of different perspectives. My sincere
gratitude also goes to the late Ian Robinson – it was due to him that I visited
Mozambique for the first time in 2013; I know that he would have read the
book with great interest.
For permissions to use material from work previously published in their
journals, I thank the following:
Oxford University Press – ‘The politics of narrative: Methodological
reflections on analysing voices of the marginalised in Africa’, African Affairs
(2018) 117 (468): 509–521.
Elsevier – ‘Spaces of extraction and suffering: Neoliberal enclave and
dispossession in Tete, Mozambique’, Geoforum (2019) 102: 116–125.
− ‘The non-politics of abandonment: Resource extractivisim, precarity
and coping in Tete, Mozambique’, Political Geography (2019) 72: 43–51.
− Kirshner, J. and Power, M., ‘Mining and extractive urbanism:
Postdevelopment in a Mozambican boomtown’, Geoforum (2015) 61: 67–78.