New Theoretical Approaches to Commodity Regions from Political Ecology

Abstract

The territorial transformations driven by the opening of the Chilean economy to the free market forty years ago have been analyzed from multiple perspectives. One of them was proposed in 2003 by Antonio Daher, describing certain regions as Í€œcommodity-regionsÍ€, referring to those whose economic activity focuses on the export of one or two goods, as a way of insertion in global markets. In this work we revisit this concept and problematize it from the perspective of political ecology, based on four dimensions (production, boom and crisis cycles, materiality of commoditized nature, and identity) applied to two cases: Antofagasta Region (mining of the copper) and Los Lagos Region (salmon farming). Our argument is that, to understand the territorial transformation that these regions have experienced, we must first recognize the project of territorial neoliberalization; and second, politicize the analysis of the project by considering the materiality of nature that will be commoditized.