Читать книгу The New Latin America - Manuel Castells - Страница 22

It is worth noting that extractive undertakings are shaped by the environmental characteristics of the territories on which they operate as well as by socio-cultural dynamics and, especially, by the environmental effects that they produce. In corporations located on such territories, there are two main groups of workers. One is made up of highly qualified workers, trained in extractive techniques, with specializations and the ability to handle a wide range of types of information, adapting to changes in information technologies. The other group includes workers who are less qualified and whose work is not central to the activities of computerized corporations. These are temporary workers or those included in a limited way, soon to be replaced by new machines. They are part of the territory and of the social and political relations that are developed on it.

This kind of relationship to territory presupposes a dynamic interaction between nature, which creates and reproduces biodiversity, and a matrix of socio-territorial relationships, often multicultural relationships, that depend on, and frequently destroy, the resilience of nature and its ecological systems. Informational corporations introduce innovations into the process of extractive exploitation, and very often the result is the degradation of the environment, or a reduction in ecological capacities for resilience.

Territories are also social, cultural, political, and institutional constructions. They are spaces connected to regional or local societies, with traditions and cultures that shape relationships with nature. Andean peoples, for example, cultivated a relationship with nature that centered on coexistence at various ecological levels. This is a good example of a fertile interaction between cultures and ecological territories (Murra, 2017 [1969]). Juan Wahren argues that we can “define a territory as a geographic space shot through with social, political, cultural, and economic relations, a space that is constantly resignified by the actors who live in and act on it, creating a territorial stage for conflicts through the appropriation and reterritorialization of space and of the natural resources that are found there” (Wahren, 2011: 12–13).

Various territorial actors tend to act not only on the territories that they inhabit, but also in networks. In such networks, they find support, solidarity, and even financing. Moreover, the effects of environmental degradation that can be directly experienced in a given territory can have global impacts, given their implications for climate change, which affects us all. The United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report for 2007–2008 (UNDP, 2007) – like other reports, including the 2006 report on water by the same agency (UNDP, 2006) – noted that the countries that pollute most are those with the highest levels of human development, and those that suffer most from pollution are those that have the lowest levels of human development. Still, the consequences of pollution vary and are felt at a global scale. Every local territory is therefore “glocal,” informational, and a new field for conflicts shaped by concrete experiences.

Let us consider some examples of the workings of informational extraction and its implications for territories.