Post-frontier Resource Governance ― Indigenous Rights, Extraction and Conservation in the Peruvian Amazon

The 20th century involved an unprecedented scramble for resources reaching the most remote corners of the world. Simultaneously, a quiet revolution has taken place with environmental protection, land and community rights regimes gradually taking hold, albeit unevenly, across the global South. Institutional topographies and policies have never before appeared as green and socially inclusive, yet co-exist with a deepening socio-environmental crisis. Intensified pressures stand in contrast to, persist, and even thrive under new environmental and social protection measures. The author offers an anthropological analysis of the paradox. Building on the concept of post-frontier governance, he presents a portrayal of the host of new regulatory technologies, practices and institutions that nominally close, yet more accurately characterize and restructure, contemporary resource frontiers. The book examines these arrangements ethnographically in the Peruvian Amazon by focusing on the Yanesha people and their involvement with the organization of indigenous rights, conservation and protected area planning, logging, and oil development.

Peter Bille Larsen is Lecturer of Anthropology, Development and International Governance at the universities of Lucerne and Lausanne, Switzerland. Primary fieldwork sites include the Peruvian Amazon, Viet Nam and global level processes. He has worked extensively with international organizations, NGOs and community-based organizations seeking to deepen anthropological analysis of institutions and practices.