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Environmental Security in the Ecuadorian Amazon: Waorani, Oil and Environment

Pearson, Zoe

Abstract Details

2010, Master of Arts, Ohio State University, Geography.
Work in geography surrounding the concept of security has questioned the meaning of security, evaluated spatial tactics of security, and looked at how security has become almost imperceptively ingrained in our daily lives. This thesis interrogates and extends these prior contributions by examining distinctive environmental security practices with seemingly contradictory intentions for the environment. I show that in the Ecuadorian Amazon, environmentalists and the oil and gas company Repsol YPF are interested in securing different environmental objects: oil, with obvious importance as a commodity, and biodiversity/nature, for the sake of preservation. These objects are held within the same physical environment in Block 16/YNP, and environmentalists and Repsol share the region with Waorani – a group both seek to prevent from obstructing their respective security projects. The result is that both environmentalists and the company secure different objects of the environment, in the same territory, in ways that corroborate nicely. The security practices of these two entities are fundamentally territorial, function by encouraging particular behaviors, and work through narratives about belonging in space. Through these, Waorani are made insecure in their daily lives both physically and unconsciously, and violence against them is taken-for-granted. Although common imaginations about violence, or comparisons with other sites in Ecuador, might have it that Block 16/YNP is a fairly peaceful example of oil company/indigenous relations or Waorani/outsider relations more generally, I argue that we must think more profoundly about what violence is. We must take seriously the violence that is done to Waorani individuals, and more generally seek ways to rectify past and contemporary injustices perpetrated against them and other historically and geographically marginalized populations.
Mathew Coleman (Advisor)
Kendra McSweeney (Advisor)
Becky Mansfield (Committee Member)

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Pearson, Z. (2010). Environmental Security in the Ecuadorian Amazon: Waorani, Oil and Environment [Master's thesis, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1276785206

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Pearson, Zoe. Environmental Security in the Ecuadorian Amazon: Waorani, Oil and Environment. 2010. Ohio State University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1276785206.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Pearson, Zoe. "Environmental Security in the Ecuadorian Amazon: Waorani, Oil and Environment." Master's thesis, Ohio State University, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1276785206

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)