The political ontology of climate change: moral meteorology, climate justice, and the coloniality of reality in the Bolivian Andes

This article addresses the ‘coloniality of gender’ in relation to rearticulated indigenous Aymara gender notions in contemporary Bolivia. While female indigenous activists tend to relate the subordination of women to colonialism and to see an emancipatory potential in the current process of decolonisation, there are middle-class advocates for gender equality and feminist activists who seem to fear that the ‘decolonising politics’ of the Evo Morales administration would abandon indigenous women to their ‘traditional’ silenced subordination within male-dominated structures. From the dynamics of indigenous decolonial projections, feminist critiques, middle-class misgivings and state politics, the article explores the implications of these different discourses on colonialism, decolonisation and women's subordination.

This article explores the ever-shifting semantics and semiotics of the concept ‘indígena’ in the Bolivian Andes and argues that ‘indigeneity’ is charged with different meanings by different actors in changing contexts of territorial and social struggles and state governance. The article focuses on the discourse and politics of the indigenous Andean organization ‘Consejo Nacional de Ayllus y Markas del Qullasuyu’ and its response to changing pressures on indigenous territories and resources caused by the nation-building process started in 2006 by the Evo Morales administration. The article identifies a recent conflict in the Bolivian lowlands between indigenous organizations and the Bolivian State as one decisive moment in a broader historical and political process, a moment when two divergent projects of ‘lo indígena’ emerged in the Bolivian Andes: one hegemonic state project of indigeneity and one counter-hegemonic project of indigeneity. The article shows that this was not the first time in Bolivian history that a hegemonic project from above was responded to from below with a counter-hegemonic project. Moreover, the article argues that hegemonic projects actually tend to create the spaces that are necessary for counter-hegemonic projects to emerge and for new political visions and subjectivities to take form.

The article departs from an ethnographic experience involving the kharisiri, a dystopian, fat-stealing monster of the Bolivian Andes that has been analyzed by generations of anthropologists to understand Aymara culture. However, it argues that when Aymara people identify Others, in this case anthropologists, with the kharisiri, they are primarily saying something about those Others, and not about themselves. Following Wagner’s “reverse anthropology” and Taussig’s study of native evil figures as a critique of capitalism, this article proposes that people who have been subjected to anthropological scrutiny have a critical vantage point on anthropological practices. Thus, dystopia and monstrosity fulfill a decolonial purpose by handing over a mirror to anthropologists, urging them to meditate on their own monstrous ways of operating, the “extractivist” nature of ethnography, the Anglophone-centrism of anthropological writing, and, not least, the coercive reward systems of academia which disciplinize us into ...

Climate conditions, in complex interrelations with other socioenvironmental, economic, political and cultural factors, significantly play a key role in shaping population density and movement. However, the impacts of climate change on global human migration remain poorly understood. This study assesses the sensitivity of international migration to climate change across 160 countries and regions, focusing on temperature-related climate indices. The results show that migration patterns are strongly influenced by a country’s baseline climate and economic conditions. Under global warming, countries in mid- to high-latitudes with lower baseline temperatures are projected to experience substantial increases in migration inflows, while low-latitude countries are likely to see rising migration outflows. This climate sensitivity is especially pronounced in higher Gross Domestic Product (GDP) countries, whereas lower-GDP countries show little dependence on baseline climate. A simple predictive model based on projected changes in climate and GDP suggests that populations in low-GDP, low-latitude countries will face worsening conditions and increasing migration pressure by the end of the 21st century. The results underscore the growing influence of economic factors on migration and call for urgent integration of climate justice into migration policy to support vulnerable populations in a warming world.

With the coming to power of Evo Morales and el Movimiento al Socialismo, an indigenized language of resistance became the language of power. In this paper I explore how epistemological and ontological ‘radical difference’ was co-opted and used to legitimize Bolivian state power. I argue that when institutionalized and instrumentalized within the state apparatus, indigeneity – as an emancipatory device of radical difference – implodes on itself and its radical potential is lost in the black hole that is coloniality. This paper provides an analytical and historical horizon against which recent political events in Bolivia can be understood.