Default topic and question for essay for ANTH 320/DEVS 321 People and Development Fall 2017

Question: Should the highway project through TIPNIS have gone ahead? Why or why not? Discuss with respect to the benefits and problems for specific groups of people.

Academic sources based on first hand research among people dealing with the case:

Fontana, Lorenza B. and Jean Grugel. 2016. "The politics of indigenous participation through 'Free Prior informed consent': Reflections from the Bolivian case." World Development 77: 249-261.

Hope, Jessica. 2016. "Losing ground? Extractive-led development versus environmentalism in the Isiboro Secure Indigenous Territory and National Park (TIPNIS), Bolivia." The Extractive Industries and Society 3(4): 922-929.

Laing, Anna F. 2015. "Resource sovereignties in Bolivia: re-conceptualising the relationship
between indigenous identities and the environment during the TIPNIS conflict." Bulletin of Latin
American Research, 34 (2): 149-166.

MacNeish, John-Andrew. 2013. "Extraction, Protest and Indigeneity in Bolivia: The TIPNIS Effect.” Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies. 8(2): 221–242.

Reyes-García, Victoria, Jaime Paneque-Gálvez, Patrick Bottazzi, Ana C. Luz, Maximilien Gueze,
Manuel J. Macía, Martí Orta-Martínez, Pablo Pacheco. 2014. "Indigenous land reconfiguration and fragmented institutions: A historical political ecology of Tsimane’ lands (Bolivian Amazon)." Journal of Rural Studies 34: 282-291.

Sanchez-Lopez, Daniela. 2015. "Reshaping notions of citizenship: The TIPNIS indigenous movement in Bolivia". Development Studies Research 2(1): 20-32.

Schilling-Vacaflor, Almut. 2017. "Who controls the territory and the resources? Free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) as a contested human rights practice in Bolivia." Third World Quarterly. 38(5):1058–1074.


Academic source, by Álvaro García Linera, who was vice-president of Bolivia during the TIPNIS conflict. While it does not directly address that conflict, it presents a defence of the strategy of the Bolivian government with respect to its promotion of natural resource extraction.

García Linero, Álvaro 2010 "The state in transition: Power bloc and the point of bifurcation." Latin American Perspectives 173, 37(4): 34-47.

Non-academic source that does a good job of outlining the central issues:

Achtenberg, Emily. 2013. "Contested Development: The Geopolitics of Bolivia’s TIPNIS Conflict." NACLA Report on the Americas, 46:2, 6-11, DOI:
10.1080/10714839.2013.11721987