(A critique of the extractive operations of capital : toward an expanded concept of extractivism )

The article takes as its point of departure the lively debates surrounding the notions of extraction and extractivism in Latin America. The authors are convinced that there is a need to expand these notions in order to grasp the specificity of contemporary processes of valorization and accumulation of capital in the region and beyond. Going beyond the focus on mining and extensive agriculture that characterizes the use of the notions of extraction and extractivism in Latin America today, the article takes them in particular as productive angles for a critical investigation of finance and financialization as well as of the persistence and mutations of neoliberalism in the region. The attempt to expand the notions of extraction and extractivism connects to a long history of struggles and theoretical elaborations, which have expanded the notion of exploitation itself. Such important topics at stake in critical debates as the hegemony of rent in contemporary capitalism, the persistence of “primitive accumulation,” and “accumulation by dispossession” are discussed in the article against the background of contemporary developments of capitalism, social struggles, and “progressive” governments in Latin America