کد مقاله | کد نشریه | سال انتشار | مقاله انگلیسی | نسخه تمام متن |
---|---|---|---|---|
5073214 | 1477108 | 2017 | 11 صفحه PDF | دانلود رایگان |
- The contradictions of post-neoliberalism are inscribed in social space.
- Bio-socialism is failing to transcend the neoliberal knowledge economy.
- Bio-socialism is functioning to legitimate primary resource extraction.
- The formal and real subsumption of nature are entangled in complex ways.
- Utopian ideologies can reproduce the conditions they seek to escape.
This paper explores the ideology and materiality of 'bio-socialism', through which the Ecuadorian government is attempting to catalyse a 'post-neoliberal' transition from the 'finite resources' of Amazonian oil reserves to the 'infinite resources' of biodiversity and scientific knowledge. This experiment is embodied in Ikiam, a public university under construction in the Ecuadorian Amazon. Drawing on extensive field research, we argue that, despite its radical intentions, bio-socialism is functioning as a strategy for the real subsumption of nature to capital, which is being operationalized in Ikiam in ways that reproduce the neoliberal knowledge economy. However, the contradictions of this process imply that, in practice, Ikiam is only intensifying established patterns of the formal subsumption of nature, by commodifying the genetic wealth and indigenous knowledge of the Amazon, and legitimating the expansion of the oil and mineral frontiers. The case of bio-socialism demonstrates the paradoxical nature of actually-existing post-neoliberalism, and illustrates the tendency for utopian ideologies to reproduce the material conditions they are seeking to escape.
Journal: Geoforum - Volume 81, May 2017, Pages 55-65