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Call for Papers - Cuerpo-territorio in Resistance: women's struggles and alternatives to extractivism across Latin America and the Caribbean

Coordinators:

Mélanie Antin: PhD candidate in socio-anthropology at the Social Dynamics and Recomposition of Spaces Laboratory, LADYSS, Université Paris Cité. Her thesis documents the agroecological practices of rural and Mapuche women in Chile, their relationships with the territory and how they build everyday resistance to extractivism.

Sofia Cevallos Vivar: Anthropologist, research associate at LADYSS, Université Paris 8, and the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, FLACSO-Brazil. She defended her thesis in anthropology at the EHESS in 2019. Her research focuses on the mobilizations of Indigenous women in the Ecuadorian Amazon in the context of the struggle against oil extractivism in the 21st century.

Renata Freitas-Machado: Anthropologist, research associate at UMR 208, PALOC. Her current research focuses on interspecies relationships in mangroves. She seeks to understand how the interactions of living beings in a salty territory compose and transform the landscapes of the mangroves and the Atlantic Forest. She conducts her fieldwork in Brazil and Guinea-Bissau. She was an IFRIS postdoctoral fellow at PALOC (2021–2023). Her dissertation in Social Anthropology was completed between 2014 and 2019 at the University of São Paulo, with a research internship at EHESS (2017–2018).

Presentation

The aim of this dossier is to bring together reflections that examine women’s political struggles through a cross-sectional analysis of gender, class, and race relations. This special issue will focus in particular on the notion of cuerpo-territorio (body-territory) and its emergence in Latin America and the Caribbean, taking into account the interest it currently generates both in academic and activist spheres.

This concept is embedded in the reflections of Guatemalan and Bolivian communitarian feminisms. Formulated in particular by Lorena Cabnal (Guatemala), it establishes an interdependence between the body, the territory, and the land (Falquet, 2015), emphasizing the interrelation between the multiple forms of violence exerted on women’s (feminized and dissident) bodies and the abuses inflicted on the territories they inhabit and defend, particularly in the contexts of extractivism. Cabnal insists on the “cosmogonic incoherence” of defending the earth while women, girls, and boys continue to be violated. Finally, while the concept of cuerpo-territorio enables the analysis of the intersections among patriarchal, racial, colonial, and extractive forms of oppression, it also opens perspectives for resistance and for the revalorization of the knowledge and practices of women in struggle.

This issue seeks to foster a dialogue among emerging reflections in Latin America and to make these debates visible in the Francophone context, bringing them into dialogue with those of political ecology, ecofeminisms, and decolonial feminisms. The collected contributions, based on empirical research, will explore the analytical contributions and limitations of the concept of cuerpo-territorio, its critical uses, as well as the ways in which it is mobilized, reappropriated, and redefined by the actors themselves. At a time of significant socio-environmental changes and in the face of growing pressure exerted by the unlimited extraction of resources, in particular in Latin American and Caribbean territories, it is essential to examine the diverse ways of sentir-pensar (feeling-thinking) about these territories (Escobar, 2016), as they (re)emerge today, paying special attention to women's narratives, experiences, and struggles.

Extractivism refers to a growing development model in countries of the Global South, based on the intensive exploitation of raw or minimally processed natural resources primarily oriented toward export markets. A wealth of literature has highlighted the devastating effects of extractive dynamics on ecosystems, the living conditions of local populations, and territorial governance. These studies also highlight the close links between extractivism and socio-environmental conflicts, often exacerbated by logics of dispossession and marginalization (Gudynas, 2009; Svampa, 2019; Allain and Maillet, 2021; Chao, 2022; Ferdinand et al., 2024).

Several studies have also highlighted the differential effects of neoliberal exploitation processes on the lives of women living in the territories in question (Falquet, 2017; De Theije, 2017). These studies reveal how extractive activities promote a reconfiguration of gender relations through a confluence of (hegemonic/subaltern) masculinities, reinforce the feminization—and invisibility—of subsistence spaces, and exacerbate gender-based violence, as well as inequalities in access to resources (land, water, etc.). In dialogue with ecofeminist theories and black and postcolonial feminisms, these investigations articulate extractivist violence with capitalist, colonial, and patriarchal violence to show how the bodies and knowledge of black, Indigenous, and peasant women, as well as their territories, have been expropriated to be transformed into goods, objects, or products susceptible to being commercialized in the global market (Shiva and Mies, 1993; Segato, 2014; Curiel and Falconí, 2021). Far from being homogeneous, these theories are declined in the plural. The ecofeminism of subsistence highlights the centrality of women's labor in social and ecological reproduction, emphasizing that patriarchal and capitalist domination destroys both nature and subsistence-based ways of life (Benquet and Pruvost, 2019; Mies and Bennholdt-Thomsen, 1999). An intersectional approach, on the other hand, seeks to examine the interconnections between different social relations (Crenshaw, 1989; Hill Collins, 2000) to understand how these dimensions can be articulated, as Brun and Cosquer (2022) aptly point out.

In Latin America, these theories intersect with community feminisms around the notion of cuerpo-territorio. In this way, they invoke the collective struggles of women that make resistance and healing possible in the face of various patriarchal, racist, colonial, and capitalist forms of oppressions (Ulloa, 2021). These approaches offer an interpretation of socio-environmental conflicts that pays attention to power relations and situated knowledge, while at the same time challenging dominant models of development and progress, often androcentric and colonial, and advocating for environmental justice linked to social justice. How are these different theories articulated to address the impact of extractivist, capitalist, colonial, and patriarchal violence on women's bodies and territories in Latin America and the Caribbean?

Women—particularly Afro-descendant, Indigenous, and peasant women—play a central role in territorial struggles against the neoliberal exploitation of natural resources. However, their political participation, as well as their strategies and repertoires of action for the defense of their territories, continue to be rendered invisible, under-recognized, and unsupported, even within their own organizations (Jenkins, 2014; Yasacama, 2022). Despite this, their demands for social and environmental justice have even reached national and international spheres, where they have made public the abuses committed in the context of extractive activities, which affect the individual and collective spheres of community life (Hernández and Cucurí, 2021). Some of them denounce extractive violence as a continuation of colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy.

This is not just about high-profile women's and feminist organizations: the research conducted by the coordinators of this issue shows how, at the local level, women are developing different forms of resistance to extractivism. This is the case of women shellfish harvesters on the northeastern coast of Brazil. Multispecies knowledge, practices, and forms of relationships emerge as an alternative mobilized by these women facing the impacts of rock salt exploitation on their territories and bodies (Machado, 2024). Similarly, Kichwa women in the Ecuadorian Amazon, confronted with oil extractivism, mobilize the discourse of the rights of indigenous peoples to address the local impacts of this model, while destabilizing the liberal discourses on bodies and territories that predominate within the framework of national justice (Cevallos, 2024). In Chile, rural and Mapuche women engage in silent struggles rooted in an ethic of care, often little visible, both in research and within the struggles themselves, as they are based on a constant association of women with care, with the local, and with the private sphere. They are also present in various organizations at different levels. Taking into account the multipositionality of women is therefore essential to analyze their struggles (Prévost, 2019; Biskupovic et al., 2025).

This call is open to researchers interested in understanding the forms of resistance led by women in the context of socio-environmental conflicts. This special issue therefore seeks to foster an intellectual, interdisciplinary, and critical exchange based on theoretical and empirical contributions derived from fieldwork conducted in Latin American and Caribbean territories. Proposals can be submitted within the following research areas:

1. Revisiting History: The objective of this axis is to analyze, from a historical and situated perspective, the different forms of oppression experienced by women in extractivist contexts and the impact these have on their mobilization. Reflections may include an analysis of the historicity and impact of colonization and coloniality on the bodies and lived experiences of Indigenous, peasant, and Afro-descendant women, with particular attention to their relationships with their territories. This research axis will explore the different meanings that women attribute to their bodies and territories and analyze how their forms of organization and demands challenge the colonial, historical, and structural conditions under which extractivism persists, while contributing to the (re)construction of their peoples' historical memory. While some authors have highlighted the eco-territorial turn of struggles in Latin America (Svampa, 2019), this axis seeks to examine the history of these struggles from a gender perspective.

2. Experiencing: This research axis invites to analyze the multiplicity of forms of extractivism and their differentiated effects on feminized bodies and territories. It aims to open a space for women's stories and their experiences linked to extractivism and its effects on their bodies and territories. It will also explore the forms of struggle and resistance that may arise in response to this. We welcome contributions that analyze alliance strategies, solidarity, discourses, and the trajectories of women participating today in collective resistance. Articles on the integration of gender issues by extractive companies ("gender washing") are also welcome. These will shed light on the reconfigurations of gender relations and the collective strategies implemented by women to counter the reappropriation of their demands.

3. Healing/Repairing and Reinventing: This third axis seeks to reflect on different ways of creating a world, healing, and reinventing relationships with land and territory. The aim is to highlight certain components of ontologies and practices, continuing the debates around notions such as territories, body-territories (Cabnal and Falquet, 2015; Falquet, 2017), ecological and interspecies communities (Haraway, 2008; Tsing, 2015), and the different forms of care (Larrère, 2012; Chao, 2022; van Dooren, 2022) that emerge during the analysis of the fieldwork. What are the alternative forms to extractivism that are being reinvented in these different territories? The objective is to analyze the multiple forms of resistance and multispecies resurgences (Chao, 2022) in landscapes marked by extraction and extinction. These alternative forms of world-making can be translated into local actions based on the revitalization of indigenous economic forms, collective projects grounded in agroecological practices, shared management of natural resources, or the composition of more-than-human territories-refuge (Tsing 2005; Haraway 2008; Chao 2022).

Bibliographie

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BENQUET, M., & PRUVOST, G., 2019, « Pratiques écoféministes : Corps, savoirs et mobilisations », Travail, genre et sociétés, 42(2) : 23‑28. https://doi.org/10.3917/tgs.042.0023

BISKUPOVIC, C., MAURINES, B., & ANTIN, M., 2025, « Donner l’alerte à bas bruit : Pour une éthique des soins agroécologiques au Chili », Anthropologica, 66(2). https://doi.org/10.18357/anthropologica66220242678

BRUN, S., & COSQUER, C., 2022, Sociologie de la race, Paris, Armand Colin. https://doi.org/10.3917/arco.brun.2022.01

CABNAL, L., 2015, « Corps-territoire et territoire-terre : le féminisme communautaire au Guatemala »(Interview by Jules Falquet) dans Pascale Molinier et al. (dir), Nouvelles menaces, nouvelles analyses au Nord et au Sud, Collections Cahiers du genre, 59, Paris, L’Harmattan, p. 73-89.

CEVALLOS, S., 2025, « Voces de mujeres indígenas amazonicas. Entrevista a Zenaida Yasacama », dans Sofia Cevallos Vivar et al., Pluralismos indígenas: territorios, democracias e interidentidades en Ecuador, EFFE Imagens e textos. https://hal.science/hal-05077724v1

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Submission of articles: https://ojs.openedition.org/index.php/cal

Deadline for submission: May 20, 2026

The Cahiers des Amériques latines also receives, throughout the year, proposals for the section « Études ».

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