Tom Perreault, Associate Professor of Geography Director of Undergraduate Studies in Geography Director, Program on Latin America and the Caribbean (PLACA) taperrea@maxwell.syr.edu Ph.D. Geography, University of Colorado, 2000 M.A. Geography, University of Texas at Austin, 1994 B.A. Biology, University of Colorado, 1988

Research
My interests center on the relationships between society and environment in Latin America.  More specifically, my work focuses on three interrelated themes: the cultural politics of indigenous and campesino environmental struggles; and resource use and environmental governance; and rural development.

My research examines the relationships between social movements, environmental politics, and resource governance in Andean South America.  Of particular interest to me is the role of rural peoples’ organizations – regional indigenous federations, irrigators’ associations, grassroots environmental movements, agricultural cooperatives – in mediating resource access and management, as well as national and transnational discourses of development and environmentalism.  In Latin America as throughout the world, rural peoples’ organizations play a crucial role not only in accessing resources and markets – and therefore enhancing their members’ livelihood opportunities – but in advancing political and cultural claims, as well as refracting, resisting, and at times reproducing dominant narratives of development and modernization.  Thus, a central focus of my work is the dialectical relationship between rural peoples' social movements and the institutional arrangements, discourses, and material practices involved in resource governance. 

Water Resources, Neoliberal Reform and Campesino Mobilization
Since 2002, my research has focused on questions of rural water governance, state reform, and campesino and indigenous politics in the Bolivian highlands.  State restructuring and neoliberal reform in Bolivia have led to the re-regulation of many natural resources such as water and land.  In the case of water, this has taken the form of (partial) privatization of some urban water supplies, which has at time met with stiff resistance (most notably in Cochabamba in 2000).  In spite of recent legal advances in the recognition of communal lands and organizations, indigenous and campesino livelihoods are under increasing pressure from economic liberalization and the concomitant privatization of resources.  With the support of a Fullbright-Hays fellowship, I spent 10 months in Bolivia during 2003-04 researching rural water management (particularly irrigation) in the context of neoliberal state restructuring.  Since then, I have continued this work, with a focus on the material and discursive practices and forms of social organization that irrigators’ associations in the Bolivian highlands employ in order to secure access to and manage water resources. I have written about these processes in papers in Environment and Planning A, Antipode, and book chapters in English and Spanish (see publications list, below). 

Natural Gas and National Politics in Bolivia
More recently, my attention has turned to the political ecologies of natural gas extraction in eastern Bolivia, and the ways that gas development has taken on significance for national, and nationalist, politics.  I am particularly interested in the relationship between resource governance, understandings of the nation, and the contentious politics of ethnicity and class in Bolivia.  I examined these themes in a preliminary fashion in a paper in Antipode, and am exploring them further as part of a comparative study entitled “Identity, power and rights” for the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD).  

Indigenous Organizations and the Cultural Politics of Rural Development
My doctoral research examined the organizational histories, discursive shifts, and political practices of a regional indigenous federation and one of its member community associations in the Ecuadorian Amazon.  This work may be seen as an institutional ethnography, which traces the roles of and relationship between these organizations in the context of nationalist development practices and ethnic cultural politics since the late 1960s.  One important aspect of these processes is the way that the practices and discourses of development become sites for the contestation of citizenship, resource rights, and identities, which I have examined in articles published in the journals Ecumene and Environment and Planning D: Society and Space.  I have considered the importance of transnational networks, the politics of scale and the construction of place in the context of indigenous peoples’ political mobilization in articles published in the journals Political Geography, Latin American Perspectives and The Geographical Review. Finally, I explored the persistence of high agrobiodiversity in lowland Kichwa household gardens, and its relationship to food security, gendered divisions of household labor, and understandings of cultural identity in a paper in the journal Human Organization.

Teaching
SOCIETY AND THE POLITICS OF NATURE (GEO 203) This course provides an introduction to environmental geography. It focuses on the social aspects of resource use practices and environmental policy, with special focus on issues of energy use, water resources, and agricultural systems.
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GEOGRAPHIES OF ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE (GEO 353) This course examines issues of environmental racism and classism, and the political ecology of environmentally-based social movements in the US and Third World.  Special attention is paid to conceptual and legal problems of environmental justice, and struggles over environmental quality. 
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GEOGRAPHY OF MOUNTAIN ENVIRONMENTS (GEO 317) This course examines geoecological and socio-economic processes associated mountain regions and environments. Topics covered include plate tectonics, geomorphology, biogeography, resource use systems, political conflict, socio-economic change, conservation and development.
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SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT (GEO 558) This course, run as a seminar, is designed for advanced undergraduates and beginning graduate students. It takes a critical, historical perspective on the practice and discourse of sustainable development. It examines the various interpretations and complexities of international development through case studies and key theoretical readings.
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SEMINAR IN POLITICAL ECOLOGY (GEO 755) This graduate seminar examines the political and economic context of environmental change and conflict. Theoretical readings and case studies highlight the social production and politicization of nature through struggles over landscapes and livelihoods, and explore ways in which understandings of nature are bound up with relations of power and constructions of identity.
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Seminar on Indigenous Political Movements in Latin America (GEO 700) click here for syllabus   click here for poster

Advising
I am interested in advising graduate students whose research concerns political ecology, environmental justice, resource governance, social movements, and/or international development, particularly in Latin America.  Research by current and past advisees has focused on:

Current students:
Barbara Green (M.A. program), thesis topic: Social movements, resource politics and nationalism in Bolivia.

Emily Billo (Ph.D. program), dissertation topic: ‘Corporate social responsibility,’ transnational oil firms, and the political ecology of rural development in the Ecuadorian Amazon

Matt Himley (Ph.D. program), dissertation topic: Mining governance and campesino livelihoods in the Peruvian Andes; (M.A. 2005), thesis title: “The politics of land and forest: nature conservation in highland Ecuador”

Elvin Delgado (Ph.D. program), dissertation topic: Political ecology of water pollution and its effects on small-scale fishing communities in Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela

Beatriz Bustos (Ph.D. program), dissertation topic: Knowledge production and environmental policy in Chile: the cases of salmon farming and private protected areas

Keith Lindner (Ph.D. Program), dissertation topic: political ecology of forest conflict, commons property and resource rights in the San Luis Valley, Colorado.

Past students:
Sandra Sánchez (M.A. 2007), thesis title: Political ecology of ecotourism in the Ecuadorian Amazon

Aman Luthra (M.A. 2004), thesis title: "Revisiting Shangri-la: landscape representation and the politics of development in Bhutan"

Mauri Stott (M.A. 2003), thesis title: "Hanging in the balance: sustainable development and politics of scale on the lower Chesapeake Bay, tidewater Virginia"

Cay Adams (M.A. 2003), thesis title: "Defending our place: protest on the Southside of Syracuse".

Commissioned Reports    
2007   “Natural Gas, Indigenous Mobilization, and the Bolivian State” Background Paper for the United Nations Research Institute for Social Development (UNRISD) Project, “Identity, Power and Rights: The State, International Institutions and Indigenous Peoples.” 35 pp. completed May 2007.

Principal Publications
Forthcoming “Custom and contradiction: Rural water governance and the politics of usos y costumbres in Bolivia's irrigators' movement.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers.

Forthcoming “Assessing the limits of neoliberal environmental governance in Bolivia,” book chapter submitted for possible inclusion in the volume Beyond Neoliberalism? John Burdick, Philip Oxhorn and Ken Roberts (eds.). Palgrave Macmillan.

Forthcoming “Environment and Development.” In Companion to Environmental Geography, Noel Castree, David Demeritt, Diana Liverman and Bruce Rhoads (eds.), Oxford: Blackwell.

Forthcoming “Environmental Governance” (co-authored with Gavin Bridge). In Companion to Environmental Geography, Noel Castree, David Demeritt, Diana Liverman and Bruce Rhoads (eds.), Oxford: Blackwell.

2008 “Geographical perspectives on Latin American social movements: a review and critique,” Geography Compass, 2(5): 1363-1385.

2008 “Popular protest and unpopular policies: state restructuring, resource conflict and social justice in Bolivia” In Environmental Justice in Latin America. David Carruthers (ed.), MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 239-262.

2007 “De la guerra del agua a la guerra del gas: gobernabilidad de recursos, neoliberalismo, y protesta popular en Bolivia,” In Depsués de las Guerras del Agua en Bolivia, Carlos Crespo and Susan Spronk, (eds.), La Paz, Plural Editores, pp. 147-182.

2006 "Reestructuración del estado y las políticas de escala de la gestión de agua rural en bolivia." In Políticas Hídricas y Derechos Campesinos e Indígenas, Rutgerd Boelens (ed.), Lima, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos/ Quito, Abya Yala, pp. 281-315.

2006   "From the Guerra del Agua to the Guerra del Gas: Resource governance, popular protest and social justice in Bolivia." Antipode, 38(1): 150-172.

2005   “Why chacras (swidden gardens) persist: Agrobiodiversity, food security, and cultural identity in the Ecuadorian Amazon,” Human Organization, 64(4): 327-339.

2005   "Geographies of neoliberalism in Latin America," with Patricia Martin (guest editorial and introduction to special issue), Environment and Planning A, 37(2): 191-201.
 

2005   “State Restructuring and the Scale Politics of Rural Water in Bolivia,” Environment and Planning A, 37(2): 263-284.

2003   “Social capital, development, and indigenous politics in Ecuadorian Amazonia.” Geographical Review, 93(3): 328-349.

2003   “A people with our own identity: toward a cultural politics of development in Ecuadorian Amazonia.”  Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 21(5): 583-606.

2003   “Changing places: transnational networks, ethnic politics, and community development in the Ecuadorian Amazon.” Political Geography, 22(1): 61-88.

2003 “Making space: community organization, agrarian change, and the politics of scale in the Ecuadorian Amazon.” Latin American Perspectives, 30(1): 96-121

2003 “Introduction: Indigenous transformational movements in contemporary Latin America” (introduction to special edited issue) with J. Montgomery Roper and Patrick Wilson. Latin American Perspectives, 30(1): 5-22

2002 Movilización política e identidad indígena en el Alto Napo. Quito: Ediciones Abya Yala.

2001. "Vidas rurales y acceso a recursos naturales: El caso Guamote," with Anthony Bebbington. In A. Bebbington, and V.H. Torres (eds.), Capital Social en los Andes, pp. 69-104 (Quito: Abya Yala).

2001 “Organizaciones de riego y la formación de capital social: El caso Cayambe,” with Anthony Bebbington and Thomas Carroll. In A. Bebbington, and V.H. Torres (eds.), Capital Social en los Andes, pp. 105-139 (Quito: Abya Yala).

2001 “Developing identities: indigenous mobilization, rural livelihoods, and resource access in Ecuadorian Amazonia.” Ecumene, 8(4): 381-413.

1999 “Social capital, development and access to resources in highland Ecuador,” with Anthony Bebbington, Economic Geography, 75(4): 395-418.

1998   “Indigenous irrigation organizations and the formation of social capital in northern highland Ecuador,” with Anthony J. Bebbington, and Thomas F. Carroll, Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers Yearbook, 24: 1-15.

1996 “Nature preserves and community conflict: a case study in highland Ecuador.”  Mountain Research and Development, 16(2): 167-175.

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