The Ethno-Environmental Fix and Its Limits: Inidgenious Land Titlung and The Production of Not-Quite-Liberal Natures in Bolivia

Geoforum xxx (2013) xxxxxx
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The ethno-environmental x and its limits: Indigenous land titling

and the production of not-quite-neoliberal natures in Bolivia
Penelope Anthias , Sarah A. Radcliffe
Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Downing Place, Cambridge CB2 3EN, UK
a r t i c l e
i n f o
Article history:
Available online xxxx
Keywords:
Bolivia
TCOs
Indigenous peoples
Development
Extractive industry
Land titling
a b s t r a c t
During the 1980s and 1990s, an era of neoliberal reform, global development institutions like the World
Bank began promoting and nancing the collective titling of indigenous territories. Extending and linking
existing discussions of neoliberal multiculturalism and neoliberal natures, this paper interrogates indigenous land rights as a type of ethno-environmental x, designed to synergise protection of vulnerable
populations and highly-valued natures from the destructive effects of markets, in an era of multiple
countermovements. Using the example of the titling of TCOs (Original Communal Lands) in Bolivia, the
paper explores how governmental aspirations for indigenous territories unravelled in practice, producing
hybrid, double-edged and not-quite-neoliberal spaces spaces which have, paradoxically, emerged as
key sites for the construction of more radical indigenous projects.
2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Recent literature in geography on neoliberal natures has
helped to move us beyond oversimplied understandings of neoliberalism, drawing attention to the variegated practices for governing socio-nature that have emerged in recent decades (for
example, Brenner et al., 2010; Peck et al., 2010; Ferguson, 2010;
Manseld, 2007; Bakker, 2005, 2009; Brand and Sekler, 2009). As
Bakker notes, however, this literature has been better at identifying variegation than accounting for it. Geographers have been collectively unable to generate convincing explanations of the
neoliberalization of nature as a historically and geographically differentiated, yet global (or at least translocal) phenomenon (2010,
p. 721). It is this challenge of accounting forvariegation that this paper takes up. It does so by focusing on a rather different example
than those previously considered. It starts from a consideration
of why, during the neoliberal 1980s and 1990s, global development institutions like the World Bank, in collaboration with states,
began promoting and nancing the collective titling of indigenous
territories in a range of countries. In contrast to the emphasis on
the neoliberalization of nature, we focus on legal and political processes that gave rise to the designation of spaces and subjects as
outside the market. The creation of legally-designated territories
called Original Communal Lands (TCOs) in Bolivia permits an
exploration of a scheme to deliberately produce forms of socio-nature that were not-quite-neoliberal, while also highlighting the
Corresponding author.
E-mail addresses: penelope.anthias@gmail.com (P. Anthias), sar23@cam.ac.uk
(S.A. Radcliffe).
ongoing capacity of the postcolonial capitalization of natural resources to undermine these socio-natures.
Bringing together recent work on environmental xes (Bakker, 2009, 2010; Castree, 2008, 2009) and schemes to divide citizenship (Hall et al., 2011, see also Li, 2007a; Moore, 2005), we
argue that global support for indigenous land rights can be seen
as an example of what we call the ethno-environmental x.
We do not use the term x here in a narrowly Marxian sense
(Harvey, 2003), nor do we wish to imply a rigid set of policy interventions for creating or governing ethnic territories. Rather, we use
the term to point to the emergence, alongside neoliberal economic
reform, of a spectrum of governance approaches that sought to
synergise protection of vulnerable populations and highly-valued
natures from the destructive effects of markets. To put it another
way, in a world in which environmental risks, ethnic identities
and spatial technologies of governance have all come to the fore,
we think it is important to reect on how processes of ethnic classication and differentiated citizenship are linked discursively
and in practice to territorialised approaches to nature conservation. We further suggest that examining these links sheds important light on variegation in neoliberal governance approaches
and outcomes. As such, while this paper focuses on indigenous
land rights, the concept of ethno-environmental x could be
used to interrogate a broader set of governance interventions
regarding not-quite-neoliberal natures. Existing discussions of
indigenous land rights and neoliberalism, on which we draw, could
also be enriched by a focus on the environmental agendas and outcomes of the territorial turn (Bryan, 2012; Wainwright and Bryan
2009, Offen, 2003; Hale, 2006, 2011).
In exploring these dynamics in the Bolivian and Latin American
context, it is important to emphasise at the outset that the agency
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.06.007
Please cite this article in press as: Anthias, P., Radcliffe, S.A. The ethno-environmental x and its limits: Indigenous land titling and the production of notquite-neoliberal natures in Bolivia. Geoforum (2013), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2013.06.007
P. Anthias, S.A. Radcliffe / Geoforum xxx (2013) xxxxxx
of indigenous peoples in claiming territorial rights and envisioning

alternative forms of development were foundational in shaping the
emergence and outcomes of this ethno-environmental x. As we
seek to highlight, indigenous mobilisation and advocacy played a
key role in shaping these shifting global policy agendas. Nor do
we wish to suggest, by using the term x, that indigenous land
titling resolved problems of indigenous dispossession and environmental destruction under neoliberalism; still less that it has satised indigenous demands for territory. Our discussion of TCO titling
in Bolivia highlights the governmental limits of the ethno-environmental x in terms of all of the above. Nevertheless, indigenous collective territories do mediate market-nature-society
relations in important ways, giving rise to diverse not-quite-neoliberal spaces, in which processes of marketisation often exist
alongside other governmental or indigenous projects for territorial
development.
The paper is structured as follows. Section one considers how
the neoliberal natures literature has sought to explain variegation in neoliberal governance formations, suggesting that insights
from this literature, combined with Tania Lis focus on schemes
to divide citizenship, provide a theoretical framework for understanding global support for indigenous land rights. Section two
provides an analysis of global development policy and discourse
during the 1980s and 1990s to elaborate the notion of indigenous
lands rights as an ethno-environmental x. Section three examines TCOs in Bolivia as one example of how the limitations of the
ethno-environmental x play out in practice and the hybrid
not-quite-neoliberal natures this gives rise to. We conclude the
paper by reecting on how indigenous peoples in Bolivia have
drawn on the limitations and contradictions of TCO titling to advance more progressive, post-neoliberal political and territorial
projects.
2. Theorising variegation in neoliberal governance
2.1. Neoliberal natures and environmental xes
The neoliberal natures literature has demonstrated that neoliberalization is a far from monolithic or totalizing process, but
rather gives rise to a diverse array of arrangements for governing
socio-nature. What accounts for this variegation? One explanation
provided in many accounts is that variegation occurs as the result
of an encounter between neoliberalizing logics and messy or uncooperative socio-natures. This messiness relates to both the sociopolitical context in which interventions are implemented, and
the kind of natures that are being targeted:
[Variegation occurs] not only because neoliberalism takes place
within existing political economic formations with which it has
an antagonistic relationship, but also because of the articulation
of labour and accumulation strategies with ecological processes
in specic biophysical settings, which create barriers and constraints to capital accumulation (Bakker, 2010, p. 720).
This explanation is useful in revealing the ways in which governance arrangements are transformed on the ground something
we take up in our discussion of TCOs. Nevertheless, it only goes so
far. Crucially, it does not shed light on broader shifts in policy agendas that may emerge over time from encounters with these natural
and social limits. In fact, there is a danger that governance approaches that dont appear neoliberalizing from the outset will
simply be excluded from analysis indigenous land rights being
a case in point.
In this regard, a complementary perspective, inected by Marxian interpretations, is the concept of environmental xes, which
describes economistic strategies of externalization and internaliza-
tion of socio-environmental conditions that are used to sustain

accumulation in the face of countervailing forces internal and
external to the capitalist system, which can include economic, ecological or legitimation crises (Castree, 2008; Bakker, 2009, 2010).
Recent experiments in market environmentalism provide one
example; as Bakker (2010, p. 13) notes, these emerged in response
to the global environmental movement of the 1970s, when widespread awareness emerged of the fact that an instrumentalist approach to nature as a source for resources and sink for wastes
was reaching (human-perceived) limits. As she notes, a central
irony of these processes is that they purport to present a [market-based] solution to environmental crises which capitalism has
played a role in creating. Castrees denition of environmental
xes is broader than Bakkers, encompassing cases where it is less
a prot-driven quest for market expansion than the danger of
public unrest, leading to either regime change or system transformation, which propels the state to adopt a more interventionist
role, economically, socially, and environmentally, culminating in
the application of various environmental xes (2008, p. 149).
Crucially, his account reveals that variegated processes of neoliberalizing nature are driven by objectives that relate not only to the
need to overcome barriers to processes of capital accumulation,
but also to the need to govern society and nature in their wake.1
It is in this broader conception of environmental xes that we
see an opening for considering indigenous land rights in relation to
neoliberalism as a global policy agenda that gained traction
amidst attempts to limit the destructive effects of marketisation
on designated populations and natures. The key difference, of
course, is that, unlike other examples discussed in the neoliberal
natures literature, indigenous land rights do not employ markets
towards this end. Nevertheless, as an approach for governing socionature arising during the recent period of market expansion, they
demand our critical attention. As such, we argue for moving beyond a consideration of processes of marketisation and their
misadventures to consider a broader range of governance approaches that have emerged alongside, and in relation to, these
processes, and the ways they contribute to the production of designated areas of not-quite-neoliberal nature. In order to further
interrogate how indigenous land rights can be considered in relation to marketisation, we turn to the work of anthropologist Tania
Murray Li.
2.2. Countermovements and schemes to divide citizenship
In a recent paper (2007a), Li summarises the strategies that ruling regimes have employed to regulate relations between people
and land from the colonial period to the present in postcolonial
contexts.2 Her approach draws on that of Polanyi, who famously observed that to allow the market mechanism to be the sole director
of the fate of human beings and their natural environment would result in the demolition of society (1957 (1944), p. 76). Before this
destruction happened, Polanyi argued that society would recognize
the risk of destruction, and devise protective measures to re-embed
the reproduction of human life in social relations. These measures,
and the social forces that bring them into being, comprise what he
called a double movement or countermovement. While the concept
of countermovement has often been used to refer to social movements facing neoliberal processes of accumulation by disposses1
In fact, distinguishing between capitalist and governmental purposes seems
problematic. As many authors note, ungovernable socio-natures themselves present
barriers to processes of capitalist accumulation. Furthermore, interventions are often
defended on both economic and governmental grounds; as Bakker notes (citing
Bernstein), liberal environmentalism is founded on the belief in the compatibility
of environmental concern, economic growth, the basic tenets of a market economy,
and a liberal international order (2010, p. 726).
2
A revised version of this paper was published in 2010 (Li, 2010).
sion (Harvey, 2003; Perreault, 2009), as Li notes (2007a), Polanyis

conception of the term includes elements of the ruling class, or those
in government, who recognize the need to take protective measures
to curb the destructive effects of the market on populations (see also
Hart, 2010).
In this vein, Li interrogates the strategies through which colonial administrations, states and development planners have sought
to mitigate the potentially destructive effects of markets on certain
groups of people. These relate both to the dispossession resulting
from enclosures enacted by extraterritorial actors and to that
which occurs through the relentless micro-capitalism that
emerges among peasants as some accumulate land and capital,
while others slide into debt and are forced to sell up (Li, 2007a,
p.5). She highlights three key elite and governmental strategies
for dealing with these tendencies:
[Rulers either] 1) extend and deepen a market in land, backed
by a transparent system for registering private property, in
the name of productivity, efciency and market discipline; 2)
seek to restrict the market by a combination of regulation and
educational campaigns designed to convince the feckless and
foolish that they should work harder, avoid debt, and hold onto
their land; or 3) designate certain people, and certain places, as
unt to become market subjects (Li 2007a, pp. 5-6.).
This triad of approaches places the use of market-based instruments in the context of countermovements environmental
xes alongside attempts to restrict the market through nonmarket forms of regulation. In other words, rather than taking as
a starting point processes of marketization and then enquiring
into their different forms and functions, as scholars of neoliberal
natures have tended to do, Li starts with governmental countermovements and then examines the different governance instruments these give rise to some of which involve markets and
some of which do not. It is within the third category designating
certain people, and certain places, as unt to become market subjects, that Li locates global development discourse on indigenous
peoples and the granting of collective indigenous land rights.
Extending these points, the next section explores the characteristics of policy and political convergence around the designation of
certain socio-natures indigenous territories as unt to become
subject to the market. The three core strands in this global convergence around the legitimacy of indigenous land rights comprise
three inter-related countermovements, namely the indigenous
rights movement, social responses to neoliberalism, and the environmental countermovement.
3. Not-quite-neoliberal schemes to divide citizenship and
nature
The global indigenous rights movement emerged during the
1970s to challenge the until then dominant assimilationist approach to indigenous development. Exposing the violence enacted
on indigenous peoples throughout the world in the name of
development, it opened a crack in the so-far solid condence
that progress justied almost everything (Blaser, Feit and McRae,
cited in Engle: p. 191). Indigenous rights advocates called for alternative models of development that would allow indigenous peoples to develop in culturally-appropriate ways, according to their
own priorities. These brought about a paradigmatic shift towards
what became known as ethnodevelopment or developmentwith-identity (Andolina et al., 2009).
This shift was reected, and greatly advanced, by the International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 169, passed in 1989.
Explicitly rejecting the assimilationist philosophy of its predecessor, it called for respect for the cultural integrity of indigenous peo-
ples, their co-participation in national society and development

decision-making, and the recognition of their territorial rights.
During the 1990s, these calls were echoed by leading global development institutions (Andolina et al., 2009). This occurred against a
backdrop of indigenous activism throughout the Americas, which
gained momentum and international attention around the 1992
Quintencennial of Colombuss landing. In voicing their demands
rst and foremost for territorial rights indigenous peoples
made reference to Convention 169 and drew support from emergent transnational networks of development actors (Andolina
et al., 2009). As such, they took advantage of new openings under
neoliberalism to voice demands oriented at addressing longer histories of exclusionary and assimilationist forms of development.
Yet, global support for indigenous land rights also had a more
ambivalent context, occurring against a backdrop of growing transnational capitalist incursions into indigenous territories. Some of
the earliest and most inuential global policy statements on indigenous land rights appeared in the context of attempts to mitigate
the effects of large-scale capitalist projects on indigenous populations. In 1982, the World Bank issued its operational policy statement, OMS 2.34, outlining procedures for protecting the rights of
so-called tribal people in Bank-nanced development projects.
The directive stated that:
Unless special measures are adopted, tribal people are more
likely to be harmed than helped by development projects that
are intended for beneciaries other than themselves. Therefore,
whenever tribal peoples may be affected, the design of projects
should include measures or components necessary to safeguard
their interests, and, whenever feasible, to enhance their wellbeing. (cited in Davis et al., 1998, p. 4)
Among these safeguards, it recommended that the design of tribal components of Bank-funded projects or parallel programmes
should contain the recognition, demarcation and protection of tribal areas containing those resources required to sustain the tribal
peoples traditional means of livelihood (Davis et al., 1998, p. 5
6). Operational Directive 4.20 of 1991 strengthened this commitment to indigenous land rights, recommending that:
Where Bank-nanced projects potentially affect the lands and
natural resources of indigenous peoples, measures should be
taken to ensure that the land and territorial security of affected
populations and their customary rights of use and access to natural resources are not adversely affected (cited in Davis et al.,
1998, pp. 78)
Recommended measures include regularization of customary
rights and/or compensation arrangements. . . to avoid, minimize
or mitigate such impacts. OD4.20 also stipulates that all Bankfunded projects that affect indigenous peoples must contain a special Indigenous Peoples Development Plan, which must include a
land tenure component that establishes indigenous titles to ancestral lands and resources. Finally, the directive indicates the Banks
intention to provide funding and technical assistance to Borrower
Countries in the process of indigenous land regularisation.
These safeguards appeared at a time when the World Bank was
promoting the privatization of hydrocarbons and mining industries
in numerous developing countries, as well as providing loans for
extractive industry projects (Grifths, 2000). In the context of such
projects, indigenous land rights have various functions. First, the
clarication of property rights in areas with large numbers of
indigenous people, where the application of property law was uneven, provides essential juridical security for investment capital.
Second, clarifying the boundaries of indigenous claims is seen to
enhance the governability of territories earmarked for extraction,
[reducing] the risk that tribal people will suffer from the projects
consequences or disrupt its implementation (OD2.34, cited in Davis, 1993, p. 5). It would also enable private companies to clarify
their roles and responsibilities where indigenous communities
are affected by their activities (Davis, 1993, p. 5, cited in Davis
et al., 1998, pp. 910).
The fact that indigenous land rights were embraced by multilateral agencies at a time when their territories and resources (titled
or not) were becoming increasingly integrated into transnational
capitalist circuits makes them highly ambivalent (Bryan, 2012;
Hale, 2002, 2006). Hale describes World Bank funding for indigenous land titling as a Faustian bargain: recognition of multicultural rights in return for endorsement, implicit or otherwise, of
the broader political project of neoliberalism (2006, p. 110).
Although we would question whether indigenous peoples endorsed neoliberalism, Hales comment hints at what was at stake
here; not only the governability of extraction, but the legitimacy
of the neoliberal development model. The Banks growing commitment to indigenous land rights occurred against a backdrop of critique from activists, social movements, indigenous organizations
and academics, who pointed to the damaging impacts of its policy
prescriptions, both on indigenous peoples and on society more
broadly. In doing so, they contributed towards bringing about a
broader shift towards more socially-oriented, participatory and
pre-emptive development agenda (Peck and Tickell, 2002; Andolina et al., 2009; Soederberg, 2004; Hart, 2010). As such, global support for indigenous land rights in the 1990s was a product both of
governmental efforts to manage social tensions resulting from (and
anticipated in) ongoing processes of capital accumulation, and of
indigenous peoples ability to exploit the resulting political openings to articulate historically-grounded demands. This broadly
supports Lis account, while making more explicit indigenous peoples agency, illustrative of the dialectical relationship between social and governmental countermovements.3
However, we would argue that this is still only part of the story.
What it misses is the extent to which these new territories were
also bound up in an environmental countermovement. Li (2007a,
p. 23) acknowledges this to a degree, noting that in addition to
aiming to [protect] indigenous peoples from capitalism, secure,
collective and inalienable tenure is thought to encourage them
to engage in sustainable management of natural resources and biodiversity conservation. However, she views this conservation
function as a kind of convenient, post hoc add-on:
The conservation element, grafted onto the countermovement to
protect indigenous people in the 1990s, has brought new social
forces into the assemblage, and given old arguments for collective, inalienable tenure some new twists. (Li, 2007a, our
emphasis).
valuable environments from destruction (Harris and Hazen,

2006). However, conservation areas like their colonial predecessors predicated on the assumption that saving nature meant
excluding people soon produced their own countermovement.
From the 1980s, academics and activists documented the detrimental effects of exclusionary conservation on local populations,
claiming they denied indigenous peoples rights, evicted them from
their homelands and provoked long-term social conict (Colchester, 2004; Adams and Hutton, 2007; Negi and Nautiyal, 2003). Furthermore, it was argued that this approach backred from a
conservation perspective, reducing peoples long-term stewardship
of land (WWF, cited in Colchester, 2004, p. 147).
These critiques produced a paradigmatic shift in conservation,
towards an approach that sees development needs of local populations as compatible with, and complementary to, the achievement
of conservation goals (Marquette, 1996; Rights and Resources Initiative, 2012). In this context, the 1980s and 1990s saw an explosion of policy and academic discourse on the links between
indigenous peoples and biodiversity. Some of this interest came
from the environmental movement, reecting early engagements
between conservationists and indigenous movements (Conklin
and Graham, 1995; Davis and Wali, 1993; Engle, 2010).4 In 1987,
the Brundtland Commissions report Our Common Future connected
indigenous peoples with the Earths sustainability because of their
unique environmental knowledge. This argument was reiterated at
the UNs 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, which coinciding with the
1992 Quintecennial of Columbuss landing recognized indigenous
peoples as a Major Group that should participate in sustainable
development (Colchester, 2004, p. 148). The 1992 Global Biodiversity Strategy included in its ten principles for biodiversity conservation the notion that:
Cultural diversity is closely linked to biodiversity. Humanitys
collective knowledge of biodiversity and its use and management rests in cultural diversity; conversely, conserving biodiversity often helps strengthen cultural integrity and values
(World Resources Institute, World Conservation Union, and
United Nations Environment Programme, 1992, p. 21).
Similarly, a 1993 World Bank report noted:
Increasing awareness on the part of the Bank and other development agencies that environmentally sustainable development will not come about unless indigenous and other
traditional peoples are brought into the effort to solve the
worlds urgent environmental problem. (Davis, 1993, p. 14)
In contrast, our analysis of development policy and discourse in

this period leads us to the conclusion that conservation was not an
afterthought. Rather, from its inception support for indigenous land
rights was linked to indigenous peoples perceived role in biodiversity conservation (Stevens, 1997; Conklin and Graham, 1995). By
the 1980s and 1990s, global development schemes to divide citizenship had became intimately connected to territorially-based
approaches to biodiversity conservation (Harris and Hazen, 2006)
or schemes to divide nature.
The third countermovement relevant to this account, then, is
the global environmental movement, which emerged during the
1970s. Rather than bringing about a shift away from environmentally-destructive forms of development, this produced a proliferation of conservation areas to preserve the most fragile or
Reecting this, a new Social Policy and Resettlement Division

within the Banks Environmental Department was tasked with
developing new guidelines for increasing indigenous peoples participation in natural resource management and biodiversity conservation (Marquette, 1996), illustrating the extent to which a
global environmental countermovement had inuenced mainstream international nancial institutions.
This new discourse hinged on the idea that indigenous environmental knowledge and traditional resource management practices
could be harnessed towards the achievement of conservation goals
that would benet not only indigenous peoples but all of humanity. The links between culture and conservation were elaborated
in an extensive literature on ethnoecology, an approach which
aimed to recognize the value of the belief-knowledge practice
complex of indigenous peoples in relation to the conservation of
biodiversity (Toledo, 2002, p. 7). These links were further explored
through a variety of mapping projects, which highlighted the
3
The agency of social movements in shaping governance is undoubtedly more
evident under neoliberalism than under colonialism, and possibly more so in the
Americas than East Asian countries.
4
The imaginary of indigenous peoples as guardians of nature has a long history,
reecting the continuing resurfacing of anxieties about modernity in Western
societies (Wade, 2004).
striking spatial overlap between indigenous peoples and biodiversity (Marquette, 1996).5
In the context of this new discourse, land rights were justied
as a prerequisite for realizing indigenous peoples potential as natural resource managers. Secure collective land rights, it was argued, would encourage indigenous communities to protect their
lands, especially against outside encroachments (Davis and Wali,
1993, p. 11); conversely, without such rights, indigenous groups
[would] face pressure to degrade the land left to them in order to
survive (Davis and Wali, 1993, p. 8). Conservation organizations
supported these moves, with the added incentive that land rights
were often a prerequisite in market-based conservation and development schemes. That is not to suggest that indigenous people
were to be left alone to manage their territories. Although this discourse frames indigenous cultures, structures and practices as already there, requiring protection, they are also viewed as in need
of promotion, strengthening, development something that required a new type of partnership among indigenous peoples, the
scientic community, national governments and international
development agencies (Davis and Wali, 1993, p. 11). The harnessing of indigenous collective agency towards global conservation
objectives thus entailed new forms of not-quite-neoliberal governmentality,6 requiring the presence of conservationists, scientists,
anthropologists, cartographers, NGOs and state agencies in these
territories.
To summarise our argument thus far, we support Lis assertion
that the ascription of collective, inalienable land rights to particular groups of people (indigenous, tribal, ethnic or forest) is linked to
governmental efforts to manage the dispossessionary effects of
capitalism, and nd this helpful for understanding variegation in
neoliberal governance. At the same time, our account extends Lis
in two respects. First, we place more emphasis on the agency of
indigenous and other social movements in bringing about these
governmental shifts; the fact that indigenous peoples explicitly demanded differentiated citizenship, including collective land rights,
is crucial here. Second, we argue that indigenous land rights unlike colonial schemes to divide citizenship gained traction with
a broad array of development actors and institutions in the context
of growing anxiety about the destructive effects of capitalist development on nature. Crudely, it was indigenous natures, as much as
indigenous peoples, that global policy makers were interested in
protecting.
We nd the term ethno-environmental x useful in encapsulating this argument for several reasons. First, it signies the ways
in which ethnodevelopment and environmental agendas were closely associated as mutually benecial and logically coherent within
an emergent mainstream policy discourse. This in turn relied upon
long-standing stereotypes of indigenous populations as relatively
static and sedentary, rooted (xed) in certain territories and to
particular forms of development. Here, our argument resembles
Donald Moores concept of an ethnic spatial x (2005, p. 14,
Chapter 5), while highlighting how this has now become imbricated in forms of environmental governmentality. Second, while
we do not view ethno-environmental xes as a capitalist x in a
narrow sense, we note that indigenous land rights were embraced,
in part, to smooth the way for extractive industry development in
indigenous territories (discussed above in relation to World Bank
policy, below in relation to Bolivian TCOs; see also Hale, 2002,
2006; Wainwright and Bryan, 2009). More broadly, these policy
5
Examples include two maps produced by National Geographic, with Cultural
Survival (2002) and with the Center for the Support of Native Lands (2002), which
show extensive overlap between indigenous peoples and biodiversity sites in the
Amazon and Central America/Mexico respectively.
6
Governmentality can be dened as the conduct of conduct; government is the
attempt to shape human conduct by calculated means (Burchell et al., 1991).
models were embraced in the midst of a crisis of governance under

neoliberalism. What policy makers were ultimately attempting to
x here was the legitimacy of a model that portrayed marketization as a route to collective wellbeing and inclusive, sustainable
development.
We now turn to Bolivias TCO territories as a specic example of
the ethno-environmental x, the limitations it encountered in
practice, and the hybrid, not-quite-neoliberal territories it gave rise
to.
4. Operationalizing the ethno-environmental x: the case of

Bolivias TCOs7
4.1. Bolivias TCOs as an ethno-environmental x
Having highlighted the global dimensions of neoliberal countermovements and the ethno-environmental x, it is important to
look to specic national contexts to understand the ways in which
these ideas fed into legal and institutional frameworks for the creation and titling of indigenous territories as sites of not-quite-neoliberal nature. The creation of TCOs in Bolivia was not a simple
application of global norms; it was shaped by national and regional
dynamics, including particular manifestations of the countermovements discussed above. At the same time, this process did involve
transnational development actors, notably the World Bank. As
such, TCOs as an ethno-environmental x emerged from
complex articulations between countermovements within society
and an evolving neoliberal governance agenda.
The rst impetus for the creation of indigenous territories in Bolivia came from lowland indigenous peoples themselves. Following
a long history of colonial violence and dispossession, lowland
indigenous peoples had been excluded from Bolivias 1952 agrarian reform, which classied them as savages, unt to become
productive peasant farmers of rights-bearing citizens (Kay and Urioste, 2007; Postero, 2006), and led to their further dispossession
and the spread of exploitative labour practices in their territories.
From the 1980s, ethnic groups across the lowlands mobilised to
form indigenous organizations which united under the umbrella
organization CIDOB (Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Eastern Bolivia) to stage a series of national marches, focused on demands for territory (including but exceeding a demand for title).
The 1990 March for Territory and Dignity led to the recognition
of four indigenous territories by Supreme Decree and the governments ratication, in 1991, of ILO Convention 169. A second March
for Land and Territory was held in 1996 to coincide with the elaboration of a new land law (discussed below).
Although this process of ethnic resurgence emerged from placebased histories of colonisation and uneven geographies of postcolonial citizenship, it was also framed by the countermovements of
the neoliberal era. The 1990 March responded in part to the growing territorial incursions from transnational companies with concessions to extract hydrocarbons, timber or other raw materials
from lowland indigenous territories. These incursions were a direct
result of Bolivias neoliberal reforms of the mid-1980s, which included the capitalization of the hydrocarbons sector (Hindery,
2004; Bebbington, 2009; Humphreys Bebbington and Bebbington,
2010). At the same time, indigenous organizations took advantage
of new openings within an evolving neoliberal governance agenda
to voice their demands, drawing support from local, national and
international NGOs and framing their land claims with reference
to ILO Convention 169 (see CIDOBs 1991 Proposed Land Law).
They did so against a backdrop of growing popular mobilisation
across Bolivia in response to the social impacts of neoliberal re7
This section draws primarily on Anthiass eldwork in Tarija (2008-9; 2010-11).
form, which produced unemployment and impoverishment among

the countrys most vulnerable sectors (Postero, 2006).
While these national dynamics provided the context for indigenous demands, when indigenous peoples nally succeeded in
translating these demands into agrarian law, they did so in an arena that was inuenced, overseen and nanced by the World Bank.
In 1992, President Sanchez de Lozadas government opened a fouryear national debate on the future of Bolivias agrarian policy, a
process nanced and assisted by the Bank through its National Project for Land Administration (PNAT). Although the project commenced in 1995, project documents afrm that since 1992, the
Bank has maintained an intense policy dialogue on land tenure
and administration with the [Bolivian] Government (World Bank,
2001, p. 3). If indigenous land rights were one issue on the agenda,
the Banks principle goal for the project was to assist Bolivia to
create a more efcient and transparent land administration system. This agenda, combined with pressure from landowner, peasant and indigenous organizations (Urioste and Pacheco, 2000),
produced a law (the 1996 INRA Law, National Agrarian Reform
Law) that was an unusual combination of neoliberal and social
justice measures (Deere and Len, 2001, p. 37). Alongside measures orientated towards the commodication of land and consolidation of private property, the INRA Law reafrmed propertys
social function and recognized indigenous territorial claims
through the new legal category of Original Communal Lands (Tierras Comunitarias de Orgen, TCOs). However, provisions were
made for private, largely non-indigenous, landowners claims to
be recognized within TCOs, providing these third party claims
could demonstrate productive land use.
Drawing on ILO Convention 169, the INRA Law reproduced an
imaginary of indigenous territories as bounded spaces of ethnic
difference; TCOs were dened as:
The geographic spaces that constitute the habitat of indigenous
and originary peoples and cultures, to which they have traditionally had access and where they maintain and develop their
own forms of economic, social and cultural organization, in a
way that assure their survival and development.
Furthermore, like the various schemes listed in Lis account, the
law places TCOs outside of the land market, declaring them
inalienable, indivisible and irreversible restrictions designed
to protect their status as indigenous collective patrimony. The logic underpinning this status that indigenous peoples otherwise
risked dispossession appears to have been fully grasped by those
involved in the laws elaboration; as one former INRA employee told
Anthias, TCOs were required alongside the terms of the neoliberals to ensure that the system doesnt end up buying [indigenous
peoples land] from them (Interview conducted in Tarija, 4/4/11).
TCOs were also framed explicitly as an environmental x. In a
section of a 2001 report entitled Environmental Aspects, the
Bank argued that the titling of TCOs in eastern Bolivia is putting
limits on the expansion of un-managed, illegal extraction of forest
resources (World Bank, 2001, p. 5). Indeed, additional Bank funding for TCO titling was targeted to strengthen these environmental
benets, by giving an improved treatment to i) protection of
cultural property; and ii) demarcation of protected areas adjacent
to or within an area of titling (World Bank, 2001). As such, the
geographical overlap between some TCOs and Protected Areas
was no coincidence (see Fig. 1), reecting broader efforts to capitalise on and manage the relationship between indigenous development and biodiversity conservation, through a clarication of
rights and restrictions pertaining to different zones.8
8
On Protected Area management in Bolivia, see Brandon et al., 1998; Beltrn, 2000;
Becker and Len, 2000.
Indeed, conservation organizations were among the advocates

and nancers of TCO titling, arguing that land titling as framed
by the TCO law would effectively prevent land grabs and environmental degradation:
TCO status enables indigenous groups to formalise their land
rights and thus be able to exclude land colonisation and resource
extraction within their territory (Robertson and Wunder, 2005).
Ignoring the signicance of third party claims, these environmental advocates for TCO titling assumed a legally-claried and
smooth transition into a regulated and pro-indigenous territorialization, ignoring power differences between actors already present
in the indigenous areas. For instance, the Danish governments
development agency DANIDA the main funder of the TCO titling
argued that:
The autonomous management of territory [by indigenous peoples] should facilitate a greater identication and more sustainable management of their own resources. In terms of the
protection of the environment, the titling of TCOs permits indigenous peoples and communities to police [vigilar] and denounce
social, cultural or environmental impacts that the exploitation
of resources in their environment could give rise to (DANIDA,
2005, pp. 2324, our translation).
Indigenous observers and indigenous rights activists were more
sceptical about the interests behind acceptance of TCO titling, suggesting that global environmental concerns trumped indigenous
rights to defensible territory. As one indigenous rights activist (later Rural Development Minister under Morales) put it:
The World Bank nanced the making of that law with US$22
million from 1992 until 1996. Why did they speak of indigenous
TCOs? Out of humanitarianism, out of sensitivity? No out of
interest. Overlying what were previously protected areas, [the
Bank thought] now even better with TCOs. Its a contribution
to the world, you see, to the environmental imbalance that
exists in the world. (Interview, Santa Cruz 10/2/12)
These examples support our argument regarding the utility of the
ethno-environmental x for understanding Bolivias TCOs. In the
context of global development governmentality, TCOs were envisaged as bounded spaces of ethnic difference in which culturallyappropriate (traditional, subsistence-based) forms of development
at a distance from the capitalist market would complement ongoing
efforts to protect Bolivias biodiversity from further destruction by
outsiders (transnational companies and settler populations). Such
representations inevitably de-politicized and de-historicized the
realities of postcolonial territoriality, as we elaborate below.
From the outset, this vision was ridden with contradictions arising from the political economic context and rationale for these very
projects. The creation of TCOs coincided with a deepening integration of Bolivias land-based and subsoil resources into national and
transnational markets a process other aspects of the INRA Law
explicitly sought to promote.9 Although collectively-held TCO land
could not legally be integrated into land markets, TCO subsoil resources were subject to no such restrictions, remaining patrimony
of the Bolivian state. The exclusion of indigenous rights over subsoil
resources from the INRA Law represented a major concession from
the indigenous movement,10 who complained that TCOs offered
9
DANIDA justied its nancial support for the INRA Law citing the importance of a
more transparent and efcient system of property rights for transnational companies
investing in oil and gas exploitation in Bolivia (DANIDA, 2005, p. 15). Similarly, the
World Bank noted that pressure continues for [land titling] to be completed in the
fertile areas of eastern Bolivia as a way of promoting economic growth (2001, p. 3).
10
See CIDOBs 1991 proposed Land Law for an integral vision of territory, which
implies rights to the sky, the land and the subsoil, and autonomous territorial
governance.
Fig. 1. Map of Bolivia showing geographical overlap between TCOs and Protected Areas Elaborated by Cartographic Unit, University of Cambridge, UK, based on CIDOB and
CPTI 2000 and CEDLA 2008.
land and not territory (CIDOB-CPTI 2000), echoing academic critiques of the difference between property and territory (Blomley,
2011; Wainwright and Bryan, 2009; Bryan, 2012; Bhandar, 2011).
As such, the legal attributes of TCOs reect their ambivalent positioning in relation to broader processes of marketization, where they
represented a scheme to divide citizenship while not threatening
capitalist accumulation through resource extraction.11 We now turn
to explore these contradictions as they played out in practice, dem11
In fact, it was also hydrocarbons development in claimed TCOs that enabled

indigenous peoples to push through their legal recognition. In 1997, right-wing
President Banzer refused to recognize TCO claims, so indigenous organizations
focused efforts on an Ayoreo TCO demand in Santa Cruz, the site of a World Bankfunded gas pipeline project. According to one informant, the Bank forced Banzer to
sign the Ayoreos TCO title, opening the way for the recognition of other TCOs
(Anthias, interview with former INRA employee, Tarija, 4/4/11). This shows how
indigenous peoples creatively exploited global framings (discussed above) of
indigenous land rights as smoothing the way for extractive industry development.
onstrating how they resulted in diverse, hybrid and not-quite-neoliberal spaces, which failed to meet global institutions, state
actors or indigenous peoples expectations.
4.2. Governmentalitys limits and the production of not-quiteneoliberal natures
Being irreducibly utopian, governmental interventions can

never achieve all they seek. An important reason promised
improvements are not delivered is that the diagnosis is incomplete. . .it cannot be complete if key political-economic processes are excluded from the bounded, knowable, technical
domain. Furthermore, governmental interventions produce
effects that are contradictory, even perverse.
[Li, 2007b, p. 18]
In her description of governmentalitys limits, Li points to

three key factors; politics the possibility that a governmental
intervention will be challenged by critics rejecting its diagnoses
and prescriptions; population the fact that human relations
and processes present their own limits to the capacity of experts
to improve them; and knowledge the limits of available forms
of knowledge to comprehend a complex social reality (Li, 2007b,
pp. 1719). These observations are echoed in the neoliberal natures literature, which identies as key reasons for variegation in
governance formations natures agency and the fact that neoliberalism takes place within existing political economic formations
with which it has an antagonistic relationship (Bakker, 2010, p.
720). Building on these accounts, this section examines governmentalitys limits in relation to TCOs and how this contributes
to the production of not quite neoliberal natures. We focus this
discussion around the messiness of postcolonial territory, extractive industry development, and the unresolved question of indigenous livelihoods.
4.2.1. The messiness of postcolonial territory
Contrary to the global imaginary of indigenous territories as
bounded spaces of cultural difference, most indigenous peoples
in Bolivia share their ancestral territories with other actors a
legacy of waves of colonisation, settlement and agrarian reform
over the past century. In this postcolonial context, non-indigenous settlers and colonists have become major landowners and
signicant political actors in rural contexts where indigenous
populations demand legal rights to TCO territories. As noted
above, the INRA law foresaw the overlapping demands of nonindigenous settlers and indigenous communities, and awarded
the former priority in titling processes. Where non-indigenous
landowners productivity could be demonstrated to state ofcials
(often individuals with family and political ties to the same nonindigenous landowners), indigenous peoples claims to title
would be subordinated to private claimants.12 Such legal provisions reduced the area and viability of indigenous territories,
while subordinating alternative visions of political economy to
the normalization of a capitalist agrarian economy. Despite the
recognition and prioritization of the property claims of nonindigenous, private landowners, this group persistently resisted
TCO titling processes through outright violence, corruption, and
political lobbying. As a result many TCOs emerged not as a continuous area of collectively-owned land, but as a patchwork of collective, private and undened property rights particularly in the
Chaco region (Fig. 2). Moreover, land titled to indigenous claimants often represented the least productive land within TCOs, an
outcome that placed severe limitations on the traditional livelihoods global policy-makers and the INRA Law had imagined for
them.
Neither did arguments about indigenous peoples role in global conservation hold much traction in the elite-dominated regional institutions of the Bolivian lowlands. A legacy of recent
histories of colonisation and settlement, dominant lowland regional identities in Bolivia combine entrenched notions of racial
privilege with a machista individualism, which together frame
land rights as the reward for individual enterprise and economic
productivity (Anthias interviews with former Departmental
Director of INRA Tarija, Tarija, 15/5/2009; government ofcial,
Tarija 25/3/09).
In summary, the ethno-environmental x of TCOs was premised
upon neatly bounded socio-natures yet in practice emerged as contested, fragmented and partially consolidated territories. In postco12
The potential loss of large tracts of TCO land was to be addressed by titling
indigenous claimants adjacent state land, or through INRAs purchase of third parties
property measures that have rarely occurred in practice.
lonial territories where powerful non-indigenous actors were

embedded within, and favoured by, markets, state institutions
and most legislation, secondary importance was inevitably
awarded to conservation and ethnic claims, thereby frustrating
indigenous aspirations for recovering territory. This context also
makes TCOs fundamentally hybrid and not-quite-neoliberal
spaces,13 in which indigenous cultural and livelihoods practices exist alongside, and often in articulation with, those of non-indigenous
TCO residents (small farmers, ranchers, agro-industrialists, timber
producers), who engage in local, regional, national and international
markets to varying degrees.
4.2.2. TCOs and extractive industry development
The second example of governmentalitys limits relates to the
inability of TCOs to mediate the social and environmental impacts
of large-scale processes of capitalist territorial restructuring. As
noted, as well as containing valuable biodiversity, many TCOs overlie important hydrocarbons, mineral and timber resources, which
by means of other contemporaneous neoliberal reforms, and because of government interest in revenue had in effect become
opened up to exploitation by foreign capital. As state ofcials,
World Bank employees and indigenous leaders laboured over the
text of the INRA Law, transnational companies, other government
ministries and indeed other Bank staff were busy drawing other
maps of these territories, zoning them into sites of gas, mineral and
timber extraction. By 2008, 20 of Bolivias 84 TCOs were subject to
contracts for hydrocarbons exploration or exploitation (CEADESC,
2008, see Fig. 3).14
As a result, TCO titling coincided with new extractives development in many indigenous territories. Elsewhere, Anthias describes
how these two territorializing processes articulated in the case of
TCO Itika Guasu, which contains the mega-gas eld MargaritaHuacaya (Anthias, 2012a). As in many other cases, indigenous
claimants were not initially consulted about planned developments in the TCO. Instead, the Spanish oil company Repsol took
advantage of the TCOs unconsolidated legal status and established
land use agreements within private claimants, which were used to
undermine guaran claims, giving rise to a protracted conict between the guaran, the oil company and the Bolivian state. As this
case study illustrates, making indigenous peoples geographically
intelligible to transnational companies and development donors
through land titling does not resolve conicts around territorial
and resource sovereignty, nor does it protect the socio-natures of
TCOs from the impacts of extraction.15 Whereas neoliberal ideology
views nature as a unique object that can be atomized into bits to be
owned (Manseld, 2007, p. 401) in this case, gas by transnational
companies, and land by indigenous peoples this imaginary is belied
by the actual processes of natural gas extraction, which require a
complex land-based infrastructure and produce profound environmental, socio-cultural and economic impacts (CEADESC and APG Itika Guasu, 2005; Anthias, 2012b). After a decade and a half of
hydrocarbons development, TCO Itika Guasu constitutes a hybrid
not-quite-neoliberal space, in which transnational and national
high-tech, security, infrastructure, transport and catering companies
coexist with indigenous communities, cattle ranchers and small
farmers.
As well as producing conict, this entangled landscape
(Moore, 2005) of overlapping jurisdictions and political-economic
13
Not because indigenous territories were free of capitalist economic relations prior
to TCO titling (indeed, indigenous populations had long been incorporated into
exploitative, semi-servile labour relations in capitalist estates), but rather because of
the policy impetus to try to limit the most damaging forms of capitalist activity.
14
This gure includes 44 new hydrocarbons contracts signed by the Bolivian State
in April 2007.
15
World Bank OMS 2.34 and OD4.20 and DANIDA 2005 exemplify aspirations to this
effect (Davis et al., 1998).
Fig. 2. Map of the Bolivian Chaco region showing legal results of TCO titling in 2008 Elaborated by Cartographic Unit, University of Cambridge, UK, based on CEDLA 2008.
processes generates complex articulations between indigenous

and capitalist development dynamics, with implications for regional socio-natures. Roads built for extractive industries intensify
trends towards indigenous sales of agricultural produce, consumerism, and wage labour (including for transnational corporations);
corporate social responsibility programmes create new markets for
indigenous traditional products, such as honey or handicrafts;
departmental gas rents are channelled into rural development projects oriented in most cases towards market-based livelihoods
strategies; in the context of hard-won compensation agreements,
gas rents may be reframed by indigenous organizations as the basis
for self-dened indigenous development (Anthias, 2012a).
4.2.3. The unresolved question of indigenous livelihoods16

The third and nal dimension of governmentalitys limits in
relation to TCOs relates to the disjuncture between idealized visions of ethnodevelopment and the complex (often less than ideal)
realities of indigenous livelihoods. As noted above, global development policy discourse tends to identify indigenous peoples as
16
We use livelihoods in the broadest possible sense to denote the resources used
and activities undertaken by indigenous peoples in order to live (Scoones, 2009, p.
172). For a discussion of the evolution, contributions and limitations of the livelihoods
approach, see Ibid. In using the term here, we do not commit ourselves to an existing
analytical framework, but rather seek to demonstrate the possibility, and the
importance, of bringing livelihoods into a discussion of knowledge, politics, power
and social difference (Scoones, 2009, p. 186).
10
Fig. 3. Map of Bolivia showing geographical overlap between hydrocarbons concessions and TCOs Elaborated by Cartographic Unit, University of Cambridge, UK, based on
CEDLA 2010.
traditional, isolated and un-acculturated ethnic groups. Collective

land rights, it was argued, would protect these groups from the
dangers of rapid acculturation, leaving them free to continue
practicing traditional, sustainable forms of natural resource management. However as above sections hinted, Bolivias indigenous
peoples do not live solely from hunting, shing or subsistence
farming. Even without the presence of extra-territorial actors,
indigenous peoples have varying engagements with local, national
and even international markets as consumers, labourers, agricultural producers and providers of primary commodities. Paye et al.
make this point forcefully, noting that:
Given that [indigenous peoples] no longer produce all that they
consume, they are required to acquire agricultural or manufactured products which can only be obtained through money. For
that reason, a considerable proportion of the indigenous popu-
lation is obliged to sell its labour. In other words, a great majority of them are fully articulated with the market, because they
are inserted either permanently or temporarily in capitalist
relations of production. . . In that sense, the idea of the existence
of an indigenous economy or particular indigenous mode of
production does not hold. (Paye et al., 2011, p. 1, own
translation)
In one of the traditional communities of TCO Itika Guasu, eleven of thirteen guaran households had at least one member engaged in wage labour outside the community and contributing to
household income (household survey 2012; eldnotes 2011
2012). These jobs included agricultural labour, cattle-ranching,
construction, driving, and domestic work. Jobs were temporary,
seasonal or semi-permanent, and took place in a range of locations
from neighbouring private properties, to Tarijas urban centres, to
farms outside of Buenos Aires. In 2012, the rst community member began work in the rapidly expanding nearby Margarita-Huacaya gas eld. Ongoing capitalist engagement by indigenous
households results in mens absence from the community for long
periods of time, returning to the community mostly during the
shing season when the market, in the form of sh traders,
comes to them. Cash generated from these activities pays for indigenous households essential foodstuffs, household goods and repairs, school materials, animal vaccines and bus travel. Yet this
income is never enough; Guaran communities in the Chaco remain among the poorest in Bolivia (Concejo de Captitanes Guaranes y Tapietes de Tarija, 2009, p. 19).
It is certainly true that continuing land scarcity is part of what
makes traditional livelihoods unviable or insufcient to meet
needs. However, even where indigenous peoples have gained control over territory and resources, they are often still compelled to
seek some form of market engagement and often do so on unequal terms. Indigenous forest management plans, which cover
nearly six percent of TCO land in Bolivia, give indigenous peoples
exclusive rights to exploit forest resources. However, the high costs
involved in equipment required for timber exploitation often force
indigenous forestry organizations to sign contracts with commercial or industrial capital. In doing so, the indigenous people often
become mere providers of primary commodities, as in the Guarayo
groups recent 40-year contract with a Chinese company for the
purchase of 200 annual cubic metres of wood, where local indigenous peoples only involvement is as wage labourers (Paye et al.,
2011, p. 14). In other words, TCOs are not non-market spaces but
spaces in which traditional livelihoods activities coexist with various forms of market engagement. NGO efforts at culturally-appropriate development are often oriented towards articulating the two
by seeking markets for indigenous maize, handicrafts or other traditional products. Payments for Environmental Services (PES)
schemes with indigenous groups also exemplify efforts to make
ethnic territories viable in the context of a market economy.
Although PES schemes have been analysed by geographers as illustrating an environmental x (Bakker, 2010, discussed above),
these PES schemes can also, we argue, be viewed as an economic
x for indigenous territories a means of providing much-needed
monetary income for communities for whom traditional livelihoods are otherwise unviable, with or without land title. As such,
indigenous territories provide important insights as to why
schemes to designate certain populations and places as outside
of the market often, somewhat paradoxically, end up bringing
the market back in.
Yet this is not a simple story of the inevitability of capitalist
penetration and xing of capital, in the sense that we are situating
these dynamics rmly within the context of postcolonial hierarchies between indigenous subalterns (disadvantaged in racialized
economies and legal systems) and other, diverse but relatively
empowered actors. The framing of territorial rights as the basis
for an idealized notion of ethnodevelopment diverts attention from
these interwoven structures of coloniality and capitalist inequality
and the ways they limit indigenous peoples life chances. This resonates with a parallel critique of territorially-based conservation
strategies, which [render] less visible a plethora of non-territorial
or exible conservation strategies that might be more meaningfully enrolled to further conservation goals such as those targeting agricultural or urban landscapes (Harris and Hazen, 2006, pp.
102105). In the context of the ethno-environmental x, these
critiques converge; framing indigenous collective territories as a
solution to both indigenous development and conservation challenges obscures the fact that neither can be addressed without
more far-reaching change beyond these territories. To put it another way, the problem with the ethno-environmental x is that
it is precisely that: a x and not a solution.
11
A second concern relating to the gap between the imaginaries of

the ethno-environmental x and the not-quite-neoliberal realities of indigenous territories relates to what Engle (2010, p. 168)
terms the invisible asterix of cultural rights. If indigenous peoples are granted land rights on the basis of their expected role as
guardians of nature, those who diverge from this imaginary
as many inevitably do could potentially lose their claim to territory. In Bolivia, this double-bind is starkly illustrated in the ongoing conict over the construction of a road through the indigenous
TCO and national park Isidoro Secure (TIPNIS), where indigenous
peoples market-based livelihoods forestry management, ecotourism, organic cocoa bean cultivation, and caiman and crocodile
harvesting were used by the government to delegitimize efforts
to protect indigenous territory from large-scale infrastructure
development (Achtenberg, 2011).17
In summary, we have illustrated how the neoliberal context
within which TCOs were devised and implemented, and the ambivalent agendas behind ethno-environmental xes, produced contradictory outcomes that are illustrative of governmentalitys limits.
As a consequence of these processes, TCOs implementation, in
the context of intensifying resource extraction, led to the creation
of hybrid, not-quite-neoliberal and double-edged spaces. We
have additionally noted that the granting of rights, and production
of socio-natures within TCOs is profoundly shaped by postcolonial
exclusions and colonial stereotypes of indigenous populations at
multiple scales, from regional land institutions, to national governments, to international policy.
Fundamentally, TCOs have fallen short of indigenous peoples
own aspirations for territory, which, although heterogeneous, include both increased territorial control at a local level and a transformation of relations with non-indigenous actors originating
outside the TCO the state, non-indigenous society and transnational companies. TCO community members continue to complain
of land scarcity and inter-ethnic resource conict, while indigenous leaders express frustration at the impossibility of implementing indigenous autonomy18 or bringing transnational companies to
account while TCOs remain only partially titled (Anthias, 2012a).
These disappointments have not, however, prevented indigenous
peoples from continuing to pursue their own, more substantive visions for territory. For all the limitations of TCOs, indigenous peoples have utilized them as a key platform from which to voice
demands directed at transforming colonial power relations, exercising resource sovereignty, and increasing political participation (Gustafson, 2010, p. 995), echoing their creative appropriation of other
double-edged spaces of neoliberal multiculturalism for more radical
agendas (Postero, 2006, 2008; Lazar, 2008). Furthermore, the frustrations of TCO titling have ultimately given rise to a powerful indigenous critique of a territorial model based on a narrow vision of
agrarian rights (land, not territory), and a renewed focus on the
achievement of autonomy. Summing up this shift, the national
Guaran Ofcer of Autonomies described:
Even if we thought about culture, our principles, our projection
as a nation, those technical procedures [of TCO titling] made
[territory] in some way lose its essence, and made it into something predominantly agrarian. . . So now the substantial change
is that were changing from a way of thinking based on the
agrarian aspect, to now thinking about Land-Territory in the
17
Interestingly, the fact that these were in fact market-based conservation projects
was used by indigenous leaders to reassert their role as responsible environmental
stewards.
18
Under the 2009 Bolivian Constitution, which in principle established the right of
indigenous populations to autonomy, the process for achieving formal autonomy in
TCOs is contingent upon completion of TCO titling (Article 293, Paragraph 1; Alb and
Romero, 2009).
12
plain of political power, and thats where we talk about autonomy. (Anthias Interview in Camiri, 8/2/12)
As this quotation suggests, it was in encountering the limits of
TCOs that indigenous peoples in the Chaco and Bolivia recently elaborated a more radical territorial project based on the demand for
indigenous autonomies within the framework of a plurinational
state (Garcs, 2011; Postero, 2006), As such, TCOs provide an apt
illustration of how indigenous peoples in diverse contexts have succeeded in advancing more progressive agendas by exploiting the
limits of neoliberalism in terms of its extensivity and capacity to govern. . .or by subverting neoliberal forms (Lewis, 2009, p. 116; papers
in Asia Pacic Viewpoint, 2009; Hale, 2011). This echoes recent arguments about the diverse and potentially progressive uses of neoliberalism (Ferguson, 2010), reminding us that governance is a powerladen, but always incomplete, contested and open-ended process.
5. Conclusion
Governing capitalism entails processes of deregulation and reregulation, as efforts to secure the smooth functioning of markets
are accompanied by attempts to limit their destructive effects on
nature and society. What is notable about recent global manifestations of this double movement is their spatial character. Rather
than seeking to regulate market-society relations in general, we
have seen the emergence of governmental and policy approaches
that designate particular territories those containing highly valued biodiversity and/or culturally distinct and vulnerable populations as requiring special protection from markets. While
schemes to divide population and territory are not new, their prevalence in an era of such discursive condence in market rule is
noteworthy. Even more striking is the way in which territoriallybased approaches to nature conservation and schemes to divide
citizenship have become so profoundly interlinked. That is, how
particular subjectivities, cultural practices and even collective
political demands have become enlisted in the regulation of interactions between markets and natures. In this paper, we have argued that global support for indigenous land rights can be
understood in this light as an ethno-environmental x imagined as limiting the destructive effects of marketisation on both
ethnic populations and fragile biodiverse environments. This was
to be achieved through the creation of collectively titled, inalienable ethnic territories, where indigenous peoples would satisfy
their own development needs while realizing their potential as
guardians of biodiversity.
Using the case of TCOs in Bolivia, we have also examined what
happened when one such ethno-environmental x encountered
a reality that exceeded the calculations of its architects. We have
argued that the messiness of postcolonial territories, deterritorialized processes of capital accumulation and the reality of indigenous livelihoods all in different ways undermined TCOs as a
governmental project, as well as disappointing indigenous peoples
aspirations for territory. The result has been the production of
TCOs as hybrid, not-quite-neoliberal and potentially doubleedged spaces. Finally, we have provided some brief reections on
how indigenous peoples have utilized these ambivalent spaces
for progressive, non-neoliberal ends. While exposing the limitations of the ethno-environmental x, these indigenous struggles
challenge us to acknowledge the progressive possibilities of territory as a basis for decolonisation and alternative forms of development. TCOs remain key sites for such experiments.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Bill Adams for his comments on an earlier
version of the paper, and to the editors of this Special Issue and
anonymous reviewers for their helpful interventions. Penelope

Anthias gratefully acknowledges nancial support for her doctoral
research on TCO titling from the Economic and Social Research
Council (ES/I901957/1). She also wishes to thank Centro de Estudios Regionales de Tarija and Comunidad de Estudios JAINA for
institutional support, research contributions and friendship.
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Geoforum xxx (2013) xxxxxx

Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect

The ethno-environmental x and its limits: Indigenous land titling

P. Anthias, S.A. Radcliffe / Geoforum xxx (2013) xxxxxx

of indigenous peoples in claiming territorial rights and envisioning

tion of socio-environmental conditions that are used to sustain

P. Anthias, S.A. Radcliffe / Geoforum xxx (2013) xxxxxx

sion (Harvey, 2003; Perreault, 2009), as Li notes (2007a), Polanyis

ples, their co-participation in national society and development

P. Anthias, S.A. Radcliffe / Geoforum xxx (2013) xxxxxx

valuable environments from destruction (Harris and Hazen,

In contrast, our analysis of development policy and discourse in

Reecting this, a new Social Policy and Resettlement Division

P. Anthias, S.A. Radcliffe / Geoforum xxx (2013) xxxxxx

models were embraced in the midst of a crisis of governance under

4. Operationalizing the ethno-environmental x: the case of

This section draws primarily on Anthiass eldwork in Tarija (2008-9; 2010-11).

P. Anthias, S.A. Radcliffe / Geoforum xxx (2013) xxxxxx

form, which produced unemployment and impoverishment among

Indeed, conservation organizations were among the advocates

P. Anthias, S.A. Radcliffe / Geoforum xxx (2013) xxxxxx

In fact, it was also hydrocarbons development in claimed TCOs that enabled

Being irreducibly utopian, governmental interventions can

P. Anthias, S.A. Radcliffe / Geoforum xxx (2013) xxxxxx

In her description of governmentalitys limits, Li points to

lonial territories where powerful non-indigenous actors were

P. Anthias, S.A. Radcliffe / Geoforum xxx (2013) xxxxxx

processes generates complex articulations between indigenous

4.2.3. The unresolved question of indigenous livelihoods16

P. Anthias, S.A. Radcliffe / Geoforum xxx (2013) xxxxxx

traditional, isolated and un-acculturated ethnic groups. Collective

P. Anthias, S.A. Radcliffe / Geoforum xxx (2013) xxxxxx

A second concern relating to the gap between the imaginaries of

P. Anthias, S.A. Radcliffe / Geoforum xxx (2013) xxxxxx

anonymous reviewers for their helpful interventions. Penelope

P. Anthias, S.A. Radcliffe / Geoforum xxx (2013) xxxxxx

Marquette, C.M., 1996. Indigenous Peoples and Biodiversity in Latin America: A

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