Femmes et Extractivismes (FEMEX)

Holder

Isabel Georges ( IRD, Ceped)

Research team

• Diego Ortuzar (Research Associate at PRODIG)
• Gabriela Cabana (Fundación Ciudadanía Inteligente)
• Yumi Garcia dos Santos (Université fédérale de Minas Gerais, Departamento de Sociologia)

Description

Building on the multidisciplinary action research project conducted in Brazil on “The Effects of Lithium Extraction in the Jequitinhonha Valley: Socio-environmental Governance, Gender, and Territorial Configurations” (Fapemig, 2024–2027), the FEMEX project analyses, on the basis of biographical interviews and field observations, the place of women in contemporary extractive dynamics. Drawing on the case of the establishment of a lithium extraction multinational in the Jequitinhonha Valley (Minas Gerais, Brazil), the project examines the ways in which extractivism becomes embedded in local economies, captures pre-existing women’s activities, requalifies them as resources of legitimation, and relies on their social role to open up new frontiers of extraction. By bringing gender into dialogue with Latin American neo-extractivism, the project renews debates on women and extractivisms beyond a reading centred on domination, resistance, and the productive frontier alone, in the context of the energy transition. In practical terms, it will support the processing of the corpus, a state of the art review, and an international conference devoted to the dissemination of the results.