The Labor of Extraction in Latin America

In the abundant recent scholarship on Latin America's extractive export economies, the labor required to harvest those exports has been curiously overlooked. This pathbreaking volume shows how we can integrate an analysis of extractive labor with the currently more popular lenses of ecology and social reproduction. --Kevin A. Young, associate professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst This book demonstrates that the expansion of natural resource extraction not only comes at a price for rural communities, the environment, and Latin American economies. It also comes at a cost for workers who labor in those extractive industries. It shows how export workers in strategic sectors occupy a crucial place for building broad-based anti-capitalist movements in Latin America. The Labor of Extraction in Latin America analyzes the very struggles that are central to the future of Latin America and the world. --Steve Striffler, professor, University of Massachussetts, Boston This book takes on the hugely important task of bringing the workers back in to the study of extractive accumulation in Latin America. With a comprehensive theoretical framework and detailed case studies that both mobilize and extend it, this volume lays out an exciting new research agenda for the study of Latin American political economy. --Christy Thornton, assistant professor, Johns Hopkins University