Regular Soybeans: Translation and Framing in the Ontological Politics of a Coup

This paper argues for understanding the regulation and standardization of objects as fundamentally about adding to those objects rather than reducing or simplifying them. The analysis is based on the ethnographic study of regulatory politics in Paraguayan soybean production over the course of two decades in which the Paraguayan state increased its regulatory capacity immensely. By looking at very different forms of regulatory intervention, it shows that each regulatory moment can best be understood as a translation which adds to the complexity of the objects in question by adding new actors and concerns to their circulation. This provides a more dynamic way of understanding the politics of regulation than more common approaches that see regulation as technical and depoliticizing. Regulatory Translations: Expertise and Affect in Global Legal Fields, Symposium, May 16-18, 2013, Istanbul, Turke

Regular Soybeans: Translation and Framing in the Ontological Politics of a Coup

This paper argues for understanding the regulation and standardization of objects as fundamentally about adding to those objects rather than reducing or simplifying them. The analysis is based on the ethnographic study of regulatory politics in Paraguayan soybean production over the course of two decades in which the Paraguayan state increased its regulatory capacity immensely. By looking at very different forms of regulatory intervention, it shows that each regulatory moment can best be understood as a translation which adds to the complexity of the objects in question by adding new actors and concerns to their circulation. This provides a more dynamic way of understanding the politics of regulation than more common approaches that see regulation as technical and depoliticizing. Regulatory Translations: Expertise and Affect in Global Legal Fields, Symposium, May 16-18, 2013, Istanbul, Turke

La Soja ante la Ley: Prácticas de conocimiento, responsabilidad y el boom de la soja en Paraguay

Este artículo provee una respuesta etnográfica a la afirmación de que la soja mata, una frase comúnmente usada por militantes campesinos que viven en la frontera de la soja en Paraguay, la cual está en rápida expansión. En el contexto de los proyectos de modernización de Paraguay, desde los años sesenta en adelante, argumentos como éste fueron fácilmente descalificados como irracionales o no modernos. En este proceso, la importancia política y el potencial analítico de los granos fueron desechados, al igual que la vida y los análisis de los militantes rurales. A pesar de esto, los militantes con quienes trabajé lograron librar batallas judiciales para poner a la soja que mata ante los tribunales y lograr que esta fuese reconocida como una fuerza política en Paraguay. Al hacer esto, también abrieron una posición analítica para la etnografía –aliada a la cosmopolítica de Isabel Stengers– que emerge de una situación de respuestas mutuamente suscitadas, más que de relaciones entre seres incluidos o excluidos del territorio político a través del criterio de la modernidad.

Capitalismo: tierra y poder en América Latina (1982-2012) : Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay. Volumen I

Los tres tomos de Capitalismo, tierra y poder en América Latina reúnen un balance sobre la situación del agro en 17 países latinoamericanos. Con ello se busca continuar el magno esfuerzo realizado hace tres décadas por Pablo González Casanova con su historia de los movimientos campesinos y, al mismo tiempo, se intenta reflejar los efectos del proceso de mundialización exacerbado y dirigido por el capital financiero internacional que arrolla al agro mundial desde hace más de 30 años

Unsettling Frontiers: Property, Empire, and Race in Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams

This article explores the “unsettling” qualities of American writer Denis Johnson’s 2011 novella, Train Dreams. It explores the book’s engagement with environmental crises and indigenous cosmologies to show how the metaphysical insecurities, common to much of Johnson’s fiction, come in this context to challenge the very concept of American nationhood itself–or as the novella’s title parodies, the “American Dream.” Train Dreams unsettles what I call the narrative infrastructures undergirding the story of the American frontier-becoming-nation-state: the transcontinental railroads, and the colonial property regimes that those railroads both pursued and opened up. In three central sections, the article explores Johnson’s unsettling of notions of property, then empire, and finally race. Through these readings, it shows how the novella finds its way to an indigenous critique of America as a settler-colonial state. While previous critical discussions of the “unsettling” qualities of Johnson’s work have until now meant that word affectively, in this article my aim is therefore to emphasize its decolonizing momentum as well