Towards a Reproductive-Environmental Rationality: The Social Movements Against the Dams in Front of the Hegemonic Discourse of Development

Abstract

To the movements that resist against dams in Latin America, as well as other resistances against extractive undertakings, territory is much more than the guarantee of its subsistence: it embodies the very possibility of preserving ways of living, being and doing. That implies social relations, customs and, in many cases, a worldview that faces the mercantilization of nature proposed by the hegemonic system. This work is based on the analysis
of three movements that resist hydroelectric infrastructure projects in Chile (Koz Koz Parliament), Colombia (Asoquimbo) and Argentina (Mesa Provincial No a las Represas). To what extent do these social movements propose an alternative to instrumental rationality that makes us maximizers of utility or benefit? The hypothesis designed is that these movements are contributing to the construction of a reproductive-environmental rationality, which places in the center the extended reproduction of life, instead of capital.