Labor of Extraction in Latin America - Paperback

by Kristin Ciupa (Editor), Jeffery R. Webber (Editor)

Natural resource extraction and primary commodity export remain persistent features of the Latin American economy. This edited volume traces the power of labor in extractive sectors in Latin America starting in the 1980s and shows how labor shapes national export sectors, economies, politics, and societies more broadly.

Kristin Ciupa and Jeffery R. Webber bring together a team of international experts who look at labor in several extractive sectors--including oil and gas, mining and agriculture, and migrant labor. They present a variety of viewpoints and case studies, exploring themes of the strategic organizing potential of extractive workers, the rise of informal labor and its impact on organizing and worker solidarity, and migrant labor-power as extraction. The book analyzes relationships between workers, extractive companies, states, political parties, national social sectors, and global commodity markets. The Labor of Extraction in Latin America puts the question of labor organizing to the forefront of discussions on Latin America's ongoing history of extractive capitalism, its effects on nature, and resistance against it.
Contributions by: Fernando Cazón, Kristin Ciupa, Aleida Hernández Cervantes, Phillip A. Hough, Christopher Little, Omar Manky, Andrea Marston, Viviana Patroni, Guido Starosta, Jeffery R. Webber, Anna Zalik

Author Biography

Kristin Ciupa is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Regina. She is the author of The Political Economy of Oil in Venezuela: Class Conflict, the State, and the World Market.
Jeffery R. Webber is a professor of politics at York University, Toronto. He is the author or co-author of five books, and co-editor of two books. Most recently, he is co-author of The Impasse of the Latin American Left.