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Arturo Escobar: Territories of Difference: Place,

Movements, LifeDuke University Press, Durham, NC, 2008, 456 pp,ISBN 978-0-8223-4327-1 (paper), $29.95

Cornelia Butler Flora

Accepted: 5 April 2010 / Published online: 20 April 2010Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

This is a demanding book. And if one is not already well-versed in post-modernist

theory, it can at time seems unintelligible without rereading several times.

…the notions of actor network, assemblages, flat ontology, and flat sociality

push one to think about the real in relational and contingent, not structural and

law—driven terms. (p. 11)

What was at stake was a rearticulation of belonging—a new discursivehorizon of meaning—that enabled the creation of an unprecedented political

imaginary in terms of difference, autonomy, and cultural right (p. 215).

Yet it is worth the intellectual investment to gain an understanding of a complex

social movement in one of the hot spots of both biodiversity and armed struggle on

the Pacific coast of Colombia.

The Afro-Colombian social movement is the reason for the book, and a major

actor in the movement, Proceso de Communidades Negras [Process of Black

Communities] (PCN), provides the vehicle for theorizing. Escobar’s approach mixes

ethnography of that movement with theory, with the ethnography both illustrating

the theory and specifying it, as he links actors and context by showing the emergent

identities that come from the interactions between nature and culture.

Six key concepts are recursive and intertwined: place, capital, nature, develop-

ment, identity, and networks, each with its own chapter, but each highly related to

the other concepts in understanding the important social movement as a product of a

particular time (which depends on history) and place. Indeed, the strength of PCN is

the link of the movement to the opening and closing of the national setting

(particularly the constitutional reform of 1991) and law stemming from it, Ley 70,

C. B. Flora (&)

Charles F. Curtiss Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Agriculture and Life Sciences,

317 East Hall, Iowa State University, Ames, IA 50011-1070, USA

e-mail: [email protected]

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J Agric Environ Ethics (2011) 24:199–201

DOI 10.1007/s10806-010-9254-6



which granted cultural and territorial rights to black communities. It is through the

enactment of the politics of difference, which require the co-creation of place and

identity, that environmental activism for bio and cultural diversity is implemented

with a certain degree of success.

The Pacific region of Colombia, the place of the river-based Afro-Colombiancommunities, has undergone two kinds of linkages to the global economy. One is

the penetration of coca dealers and growers and the armed forces that supports

nacro-trafficking. The other is ‘‘development projects,’’ including the industrial

cultivation of shrimp and production of African palm for biofuels. All of these

capital penetrations destroy the ecosystem and threaten the culture. The Colombian

military, paramilitary groups, and the narco-traffickers have invaded the territory of

the Afro-Colombians and indigenous peoples. PCN developed strategies of

resistance to these threats to place and identity that allowed them to construct

both identity and place as a basis for political power and alternative modernities.Escobar develops a theory of difference that is historically specific and contingent.

In analyzing the development of the PCN as part of a social movement, Escobar

draws on a vast and eclectic literature. Indeed, there are 68 pages of extensive notes.

The bibliography includes seminal works from English and Spanish sources. The

index is outstanding and very helpful in going back and forth between events,

concepts, and meaning.

A strength of this work is its attention to the meaning-making by the actors in the

PCN. They carefully strategize and theorize the advantages and disadvantages of

international networks, and as a result of their consensus approach to decisionmaking, are able to contribute to and benefit from expansive movements of African

descendants, anti-globalization, local identity, and food autonomy to defend their

territory and their culture. The development of a collective identity (which is part of

the work ‘‘process’’ in the name of the movement) required a great deal of

organization, conversation, and concentration.

The negotiations of the PCN with the biodiversity project demonstrate the

internal and external process work that allowed a shift from scientific expert

knowledge to culturally and experientially driven local knowledge. Without the

attention to the internal processes that allowed the PCN to know themselves and

their place collectively, the biodiversity project could have resulted in conservation

without a working landscape. Instead, the PCN managed to demonstrate the

conserving power of traditional livelihood strategies in at-risk landscapes.

Biodiversity, the activists argued, equals territory plus culture. …there is no

conservation without territorial control, and conservation cannot exist outside of a

framework that incorporates local people and cultural practices (146). Cultural and

territorial rights are essential to maintain biodiversity in an era of high capital

penetration and displacement due to armed conflict.

The author was involved in research in the region from January 1993, and

continues his contact with the PCN. The long time frame allows his dialogic focus

to be extremely effective. The development and implementation of the PCN’s

politico-organizational principles are thus understandable and persuasive. Those

principles are

200 C. B. Flora

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1. Reaffirmation of identity

2. The right to territory

3. Autonomy

4. Construction of an autonomous perspective of the future

5. Declaration of solidarity

And it was these principles that separated the movement from other similar social

movements, in that it brought forward their perception of history and identity, views

concerning natural resources, territory, and development, types of political

representation and participation in the communities, and the organizational strategy

and construction of the movement as non-hierarchical. By acknowledging and

responding to the gendered nature of spaces through gender complementarity,

women were critical voices and participants in the PCN.

This is an amazing book of scholarly dexterity and breadth. For those interested

in sustainable development, Escobar demonstrates the negotiated and problematic

nature of its definition and implementation.

Arturo Escobar: Territories of Difference: Place, Movements, Life 201

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