Extractive Logic of the Coloniality of Nature: Feeling-Thinking Through Agroecology as a Decolonial Project

ABSTRACT

The following paper intends to discuss the effects of colonial power on nature, especially on the understanding of agriculture from the dialogue between decolonial approach and agroecology. It addresses the potential of agroecology within decolonial activities mainly in three scenarios: (i) the epistemological, as an alternative to scientific rationality; (ii) the political, as an alternative to the hegemony imposed by racial and patriarchal criteria; and (iii) the ontological, as an alternative to the dualist, individualist and atomizing of modernity. The main thesis is that the notions about “nature” and “environment”, which are associated with agricultural practices and capitalist-type practices, are consequences of power relations that are inscribed in the modernity- coloniality relationship and can be understood as epistemological and ontological assumptions based on an extractive logic. Finally, the importance of political work (or defiance) is discussed from the perspective of relationality and the pluri-verse in which agroecology can be a transformative option of decoloniality.

KEYWORDS:

• Agroecology
• extractivism
• coloniality of nature
• decoloniality

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 To further the debate about the “thesis of the human exceptionality”, we suggest Cf. (Schaeffer 2009).

2 The data were obtained from the portal Global Forest Watch, that provides data for forest monitoring, here: https://bit.ly/3QGaAJJ.

3 The “Vision Amazon Program” (Visión Amazonía) develops actions in Colombian municipalities in the Amazon region with the highest deforestation and prioritizes actions to reduce deforestation in the Amazon Biome. The complete information of the program can be consulted in the following link: https://visionamazonia.minambiente.gov.co/.

4 Farmers are trained in silvo-pastoral systems as “environmentally friendly models” with guides such as those found in the following link: https://www.fedegan.org.co/modulo-sistemas-silvopastoriles.

5 Data obtained from the Bovine Inventory of ICA, public institution (Inventario Bovino). Those found in the following link: https://www.ica.gov.co/areas/pecuaria/servicios/epidemiologia-veterinaria/censos-2016/censo-2018.aspx.

6 We understand movements here as “a central actor for social transformation” (Flórez-Flórez 2015, 29), which then helps to question, among other aspects, the hegemonic modes of control and manipulation over agriculture. The denial of “traditional” ways of being, doing and knowing; as well as the political decisions that contribute to the relationships of hegemonic control that colonial power exerts over nature.