The Rule of Gas in Bolivia

• In Event: States and Their Others: Rule as Process in the Andes

Abstract

This paper interrogates the articulation of processes of state formation with the ever-expanding infrastructure of natural gas as the preeminent mediator of state-subject relations in Bolivia. Conventional approaches to Andes-centric processes of rule concentrated on hegemonic practices emanating from the state, however incompletely, toward its extractive margins. Yet the governance of gas infrastructures – central to state and regional energy geopolitics – involves ever changing territorialities that transgress borders, create multiple relations of a literal give and take, and predetermine (or undermine) enunciations of sovereignty made from ‘central’ sites of rule. Clearly state-led gas development and redistributive practice depart from Bolivia’s prior eras of extractivism, which could be read as struggles for sovereignty truncated by dependency, imperialism, and neoliberal reform. Yet to what extent do new state-subject relations mediated by gas necessitate a transformation of our analytical categories? An examination of the contemporary rule of gas as seen through the politics of subsidies, jobs, and Indigenous territory suggests some possibilities.

Author

• Bret D Gustafson, Washington University/St. Louis