The Silences of Dispossession

An insightful case study about the effects of capitalism on the indigenous experience in northern Argentina

“A timely account of indigenous struggles ... Eloquent and engaging, Biocca confronts colliding responses to agrarian transformations in light of histories of dispossession and resistance”-- Paola Canova, author of Frontier Intimacies

“An important contribution to development and peasant studies”-- Nancy Postero, Professor of Anthropology, University of California San Diego

The Silences of Dispossession explores omissions, or silences, in previous investigations of agrarian transformations by foregrounding indigenous experiences of capitalist development. Providing a rich and detailed ethnographic study, Mercedes Biocca shows how capitalist processes are perceived, experienced, and either confronted or accepted depending on how dispossession, resistance, and negotiation have become embedded in the collective local memory.

Challenging accounts that efface the agency of subalterns in shaping rural dynamics and ignore the diversity of perspectives within indigenous groups, Biocca untangles the connections between global, national, and local spatial scales in her analysis of accumulation by dispossession.

Using two case studies, the Qom People in Pampa del Indio and the Moqoit people in Las Tolderías, she presents the main transformations that have taken place in the Argentine agricultural sector during the hegemony of post-neoliberalism while centering the perceptions and roles of subalterns within these transformations.

Mercedes Biocca is a Professor and an Associate Researcher at the Institute of Higher Social Studies in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

1. Indigenous Peoples, Agribusiness and the Post-Neoliberal State in Argentina
2. Accumulation by Dispossession and the Everyday Life of Indigenous Peoples
3. Living on the Edges of the Periphery
4. Resistance on the Edge: the Case of the Qom People in Pampa del Indio
5. Acquiescence on the edge: the Case of Moqoit People in Las Tolderías
6. The Actually Existing Agency of Subaltern Groups