The Devil and Florentino:Specters of petro-populism in Venezuela

Scholarship on the political economy of natural resources in the Global South has often relied on the concept of the “resource curse” to explain the negative features of extractive economies and their alleged tendency to promote rent capture at the expense of national sovereignty and development. Such theories link the behavior of social actors to an excess of “unearned income,” with little reference to the concrete forms of political and cultural mediation that reproduce this structure of growth. This article explores the role of the devil symbol in populist discourse in Venezuela and how this spectral figure comes to mediate subaltern consciousness. Tracing the origins of this image to colonialism and efforts to grasp the dynamics of the modern petrostate, the analysis shows how use of this symbol to mediate the forecast transition from a rentier to a productive economy has given workers in a state enterprise a potent set of signs to articulate opposition to unjust labor conditions. Venezuelan leaders have deployed figures drawn from local folklore to divide society into two competing power blocs. Yet, while these discourses are effective at forging coalitions and justifying specific reallocations of oil wealth, they do not obviate the tensions of this transition, and a counternarrative using these same figures has arisen in response. The article concludes with an analysis of parallels between global theories of the resource curse and local Venezuelan iterations of this discourse as well as a discussion of the role of translation in theories of culture and modernity.</p

Sowing the State: Nationalism, Sovereignty and Agrarian Politics in Venezuela

Sowing the State is an ethnographic account of the remaking of the Venezuelan nation-state at the start of the twenty-first century which underscores the centrality of agriculture to the re-envisioning of sovereignty. The narrative explores the recent efforts of the Venezuelan government to transform the rural areas of the nation into a model of agriculture capable of feeding its mostly urban population as well as the logics and rationales for this particular reform project. The dissertation explores the subjects, livelihoods, and discourses conceived as the proper basis of sovereignty as well as the intersection of agrarian politics with statecraft. In a nation heavily dependent on the export of oil and the import of food, the politics of land and its various uses is central to governance and the rural is a contested field for a variety of social groups. Based on extended fieldwork in El Centro Técnico Productivo Socialista Florentino, a state owned enterprise in the western plains of Venezuela, the narrative analyses the challenges faced by would-be nation builders after decades of neoliberal policy designed to integrate the nation into the global market as well as the activities of the enterprise directed at transcending this legacy. Not merely a restoration of the status quo or reassertion of a prior independence, I argue the Venezuelan nation is being reinvented in this drive for sovereignty and the tensions between peasants, technical experts and workers in the Florentino enterprise reflect the cleavages of an emerging state form.Ph.D.2018-02-09 00:00:0

Nature, Capital and Neighborhoods:“Dispossession without Accumulation”?

The ongoing economic crisis, which originated in the USA and has since spread rapidly to capital markets worldwide, is massive, complex, and many times contradictory. One could say the same for responses to the crisis as governments, firms and multi‐national institutions struggle to grasp the full magnitude of the event. This article interrogates the key commodities involved—land, labor and money—and the always‐uneasy relations between spaces of social reproduction and capital. Such ambivalence is critical to understanding how new economic realities are formed in light of retreating neoliberalism as markets become destabilized. The analysis provided suggests the commodities involved in the housing crisis are the basis for a countermovement against dispossession

Sowing the State: Nationalism, Sovereignty and Agrarian Politics in Venezuela

Sowing the State is an ethnographic account of the remaking of the Venezuelan nation-state at the start of the twenty-first century which underscores the centrality of agriculture to the re-envisioning of sovereignty. The narrative explores the recent efforts of the Venezuelan government to transform the rural areas of the nation into a model of agriculture capable of feeding its mostly urban population as well as the logics and rationales for this particular reform project. The dissertation explores the subjects, livelihoods, and discourses conceived as the proper basis of sovereignty as well as the intersection of agrarian politics with statecraft. In a nation heavily dependent on the export of oil and the import of food, the politics of land and its various uses is central to governance and the rural is a contested field for a variety of social groups. Based on extended fieldwork in El Centro Técnico Productivo Socialista Florentino, a state owned enterprise in the western plains of Venezuela, the narrative analyses the challenges faced by would-be nation builders after decades of neoliberal policy designed to integrate the nation into the global market as well as the activities of the enterprise directed at transcending this legacy. Not merely a restoration of the status quo or reassertion of a prior independence, I argue the Venezuelan nation is being reinvented in this drive for sovereignty and the tensions between peasants, technical experts and workers in the Florentino enterprise reflect the cleavages of an emerging state form.Ph.D.2018-02-09 00:00:0

Nature, Capital and Neighborhoods:“Dispossession without Accumulation”?

The ongoing economic crisis, which originated in the USA and has since spread rapidly to capital markets worldwide, is massive, complex, and many times contradictory. One could say the same for responses to the crisis as governments, firms and multi‐national institutions struggle to grasp the full magnitude of the event. This article interrogates the key commodities involved—land, labor and money—and the always‐uneasy relations between spaces of social reproduction and capital. Such ambivalence is critical to understanding how new economic realities are formed in light of retreating neoliberalism as markets become destabilized. The analysis provided suggests the commodities involved in the housing crisis are the basis for a countermovement against dispossession