TY - JOUR

T1 - Contextualizing consent

T2 - spaces for repression, resistance, and accommodation in Bolivia’s TIPNIS consultation

AU - Christoffersen, Lisbet

PY - 2020

Y1 - 2020

N2 - The expansion of extractive activities and the development of associated infrastructures are reviving land disputes in the Bolivian lowlands. Consultation based on Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), which has been a longstanding demand of indigenous peoples, is now being employed in cases of interventions on their lands. This paper chronicles a contested consultation in the Indigenous Territory and National Park Isiboro-Sécure (TIPNIS). The case study displays a built-in paradox in FPIC, which is based on presuppositions of equality but fails to consider the very structural imbalances that it is meant to resolve. It casts light on the implications of the consultation for those involved and depicts fundamentally different visions of the Plurinational State: the wish for a strengthening of national level institutions, on the one hand, and for self-governed collective entities, on the other. The article thus enters the debate of the ambiguous attempts of various Latin American countries to establish post-liberal democratic systems. I argue that the implementation of FPIC as direct democracy only reproduces inequalities. A closed space, after a thorough deliberative process, can provide more equity in decision-making, which is what lowland indigenous representatives also suggest.

AB - The expansion of extractive activities and the development of associated infrastructures are reviving land disputes in the Bolivian lowlands. Consultation based on Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC), which has been a longstanding demand of indigenous peoples, is now being employed in cases of interventions on their lands. This paper chronicles a contested consultation in the Indigenous Territory and National Park Isiboro-Sécure (TIPNIS). The case study displays a built-in paradox in FPIC, which is based on presuppositions of equality but fails to consider the very structural imbalances that it is meant to resolve. It casts light on the implications of the consultation for those involved and depicts fundamentally different visions of the Plurinational State: the wish for a strengthening of national level institutions, on the one hand, and for self-governed collective entities, on the other. The article thus enters the debate of the ambiguous attempts of various Latin American countries to establish post-liberal democratic systems. I argue that the implementation of FPIC as direct democracy only reproduces inequalities. A closed space, after a thorough deliberative process, can provide more equity in decision-making, which is what lowland indigenous representatives also suggest.

KW - Deliberation

KW - Free Prior Informed Consent

KW - participation

KW - plurinationalism

KW - resource nationalism

U2 - 10.1080/17442222.2020.1726023

DO - 10.1080/17442222.2020.1726023

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85079385733

VL - 15

SP - 105

EP - 129

JO - Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies

JF - Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies

SN - 1744-2222

IS - 2

ER -