Can non-utilitarian Indigenous economies help remake meaningful territorial relations in the heart of agrarian extractivism in Bolivia?

Abstract

Commodification fuels the expansion of extractivist agrarian frontiers, forcing diverse territorial relations into the dynamics of globalized markets. With commodification, resource extraction can be speeded and widened, generally leaving trails of destruction and overexploitation behind. However, research has shown that many territorial relations at agrarian frontiers resist commodification and its extractivist logics. In this study, we analyze narratives about everyday economic practices and territorial reconfigurations at the agrarian commodity frontier in the Chiquitanía, Bolivia, to understand how multiple values guide such practices, and how they complicate linear narratives of commodification. We found that non-utilitarian values play a key role in building meaningful territorial relations potentially shaping non-extractivist practices. We discuss about the importance of exposing the limits of commodification by noticing multiple value interplays to unveil and acknowledge the capacities of non-utilitarian Indigenous economies to build non-extractivist pathways.