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"McNeish, John-Andrew"
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A vote to derail extraction: popular consultation and resource sovereignty in Tolima, Colombia
In July 2013, a consulta popular (referendum) was organised by municipal authorities in Tolima, Colombia, to judge public opinion on the establishment of activities by an international mining conglomerate ie the Colosa (the Giant) gold mine. In this article study is made of the referendum, and emphasis given to its linkages with wider regional, national and Latin American efforts to anticipate damage and derail projects for resource extraction. Recognising the techniques and networks, and similar expressions of identity and territoriality, expressed in other campaigns against extraction, resource sovereignty is suggested as an approach to interpret the motivations for and dynamics of recent popular consultations.
Journal Article
Resource Extraction and Conflict in Latin America
Recent reports by the media and academic studies throughout the region have discussed the tendency towards conflict and controversy caused by an expanding frontier of extraction. The Environmental Justice Atlas is perhaps the best known international effort to map those issues. However, while there are now increasing reports on the growing intensity of these socio-environmental conflicts, in-depth analyses of their causes, impacts and responses remain limited. The extraction of natural resources, and energy resources in particular, link together local social and political changes with capitalism and the global economy--the setting of the interventionist interests of the great powers. In line with Neruda, academic analyses recognizes that there are synergies between energy and social development, and that this relationship relies not only on systems of value, but systems of violence. Here, McNeish analyzing the current wave of socio-environmental conflicts that has resulted from natural resource extraction in Latin America.
Journal Article
Comparative Reflections on Community-Oriented Policing (COP) in Post-Conflict Central America
In this article we discuss the comparative impact and significance of Community-Oriented Policing (COP) in Central America (Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua). We emphasize in particular the formal role of COP as a means to re-establish trust between the state and community, demonstrate professionalism and to evidence the democratic accountability of the police to the population. Although these formal goals remain the goal of community oriented policing, we demonstrate in this article that there has been an increased emphasis on more kinetic or militarized forms of policing in recent years. Hard handed, heavily armed and interventionist police policies have spread from El Salvador to Guatemala, and more recently Nicaragua. Moves towards more aggressive policing are explained by governments and police forces as a necessary response to the rising threat of gangs and drug cartels and horrifying levels of homicide statistics. However, as we highlight there is also evidence of these changes reflecting undemocratic shifts within national administrations and the repositioning of people within government and national institutions with links to these countries' earlier military governments.The net effect of these changes we argue is to erode the intentions of COP initiatives, and severely reduce levels of trust and accountability between people and the democratic state.
Journal Article
Community-Based Policing in Nicaragua: Do the Claims of Communitarian, Proactive and Preventative Hold True?
Until the wave of political violence in 2018, the Nicaraguan model for community-based policing (COP) was viewed by many as the means by which the country had avoided the crime and insecurity reported elsewhere in Central America. Paralleling these positive claims, the Nicaraguan National Police have emphasized particular characteristics of the COP model as the basis of this success. The Nicaraguan COP model is founded on three ethical pillars i.e. that it is communitarian, proactive and preventative. In this article, we detail the development of the Nicaraguan community-policing model and evaluate its historical and persisting significance as the guarantor of law and order through a critical evaluation of these claims and characteristics. The article demonstrates the abiding significance of the Nicaraguan COP model, and the distinctive nature of its operation. In contrast to prevailing regional trends there is much to learn from policing that emphasizes dialogue with the community over a reliance on technological or strong-arm solutions. However, the article also observes severe challenges regarding its current capacities and its erosion as a result of the pressures of presidential authoritarianism, political corruption and securitization. This erosion of the COP model has negatively affected the conditions of human security in Nicaragua and is a significant factor explaining the character of recent violence.
Journal Article
Contested powers
In the global North the commoditization of creativity and knowledge under the banner of a creative economy is being posed as the post-industrial answer to dependency on labour and natural resources. Not only does it promise a more stable and sustainable future, but an economy focused on intellectual property is more environmentally friendly, so it is suggested.
Contested Powers argues that the fixes being offered by this model are bluffs; development as witnessed in Latin American energy politics and governance remains hindered by a global division of labour and nature that puts the capacity for technological advancement in private hands. The authors call for a multi-layered understanding of sovereignty, arguing that it holds the key to undermining rigid accounts of the relationship between carbon and democracy, energy and development, and energy and political expression. Furthermore, a critical focus on energy politics is crucial to wider debates on development and sustainability.
Contested Powers is essential reading for those wondering how energy resources are converted into political power and why we still value the energy we take from our surroundings more than the means of its extraction.
eBook
Stones on the Road: The Politics of Participation and the Generation of Crisis in Bolivia
This paper demonstrates that recent protests in Bolivia must be linked to the failure of efforts to improve democratic participation in the country. It argues that such failures can be traced to a history of prejudices in national development and society and persistent biases and contradictions within international development policy and institutions. Despite these obstacles, the paper concludes that ideas for appropriate development and realistic alternatives for change to government and democracy are visible in recent critical development thinking and amongst the different social and cultural groupings involved in the demonstrations.
Journal Article
Flammable Societies
The impact of the oil and gas industry – paradoxically seen both as a blessing and a curse on socio-economic development – is a question at the heart of the comparative studies in this volume stretching from Northern Europe to the Caucasus, the Gulf of Guinea to Latin America. Britain’s transformation under Margaret Thatcher into a supposedly post-industrial society orientated towards consumer sovereignty was paid for with revenues from the North Sea oil industry, an industry conveniently out of sight and out of mind for many. Drawing on bottom-up research and theoretical reflection the authors question the political and scientific basis of current international policy that aims to address the problem of resource management through standard Western models of economic governance, institution building and national sovereignty. This book offers valuable material for students and researchers concerned with politics, inequality and poverty in resource-rich countries. Among the key critical issues the book highlights is the need to understand the politics of social territorialism as a response to exclusionary geopolitics.
eBook
