We are pleased to announce the publication of the book:

Reimaginando el Gran Chaco, Identidades, Política y Medio Ambiente en América del Sur

Edited by Silvia Hirsch, Paola Canova and Mercedes Biocca.

Published by Editorial Biblos with the support of the Société des Américanistes as part of the 2023 publication grants.

In recent decades, the South American ecoregion of the Gran Chaco has undergone accelerated environmental, social and economic change due to the intensification of extractive industries such as agribusiness, cattle ranching, logging and hydrocarbon exploitation. The region has become a complex arena of political, cultural and economic contestation between different actors, including the state, NGOs and private companies, whose projects and agendas conflict with the livelihoods of local inhabitants. The various chapters explore the dynamics and frictions generated by these changes, and reveal how different local actors experience and negotiate the region’s historical, socio-economic and environmental transformations on their own terms. The book shows how different groups in the Gran Chaco question and redefine their subjectivity, while reconfiguring their political agendas in response to these processes. It also highlights the multiple ways in which peoples inhabiting the vast Chaco region relate to a diverse set of social actors and institutions, even beyond the territorial boundaries of individual nation-states.

ISBN 978-987-814-351-4

376 pages

Coordination

• Silvia Hirsch

PhD and Master in Anthropology. Bachelor in Anthropological Sciences. Professor and researcher, Escuela Interdisciplinaria de Altos Estudios Sociales, Universidad Nacional de San Martín, Argentina. Author of “ El pueblo tapiete de Argentina : historia y cultura” (2006) and co-editor of “Mujeres indígenas de la Argentina : cultura, trabajo y poder” (2008), “Educación Intercultural Bilingüe en la Argentina” (2010), with Adriana Serrudo ; “Movilizaciones indígenas e identidades en disputa en la Argentina : historias de invisibilización y reemergencia”, with Gastón Gordillo” (2011), and “Salud pública y pueblos indígenas en la Argentina : encuentros, tensiones e interculturalidad”, with Mariana Lorenzett (2016). Her research focuses on gender, ethnicity, borders, health and education among indigenous populations.

• Paola Canova Cabañas

PhD in Anthropology. Human ecology engineer. Bachelor’s degree in German. Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Texas, Austin, USA. Author of “Frontier Intimacies: The sexual economy of the Paraguayan Chaco” (2020), translated into Spanish as “Intimidades de frontera: mujeres ayoreo y economía sexual en el Chaco paraguayo” (Biblos, 2023). She has published articles in journals such as the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology and the Journal of Mennonite Studies. Her research focuses on gender and sexuality, indigenous urbanity, indigenous-state relations, non-indigenous rurality and the political ecology of the Paraguayan Chaco.

• Mercedes Biocca

PhD in sociology. Master’s degree in international economic relations. Degree in political science. Currently associate researcher at the Interdisciplinary School of Advanced Social Studies (eidaes), National University of San Martín, Buenos Aires province, Argentina. Author of the book “The Silences of Dispossession, Agrarian Change and Indigenous Politics in Argentina” (2023). She has published in journals such as Tipití. Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America and Población & Sociedad. Her research focuses on rural issues associated with extractivism, and on relations between indigenous populations and the state in contexts of dispossession.