Bombarding with data? Drones, oil extraction and environmental justice in the Amazon

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• Murat Arsel, Murat Arsel, International Institute of Social Studies (ISS), Erasmus University Rotterdam
• Wednesday 24 October 2018, 13:00-14:00
• Small Lecture Theatre, Department of Geography.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Lucy Goodman.

Note this talk will be held on a Wednesday, while ordinarily the Political Ecology talks are on a Tuesday.

With falling prices and improving technology, drones have gone mainstream. Their use is no longer limited to barely acknowledged military missions. In addition to becoming yet another fashionable gadget for affluent consumers, they have found a variety of uses around the world for progressive causes. This presentation focuses on one such example, the deployment of drones (together with other ‘frugal but advanced’ hardware and software) to enhance community-based environmental monitoring of the impacts of oil extraction in the Ecuadorian Amazon. It will seek to answer two related questions: What types of epistemological assumptions and implications accompany the coupling of ‘advanced technologies’ with indigenous knowledge? To what extent can such combinations help dismantle existing structural inequalities between affected communities on the one side and corporations and the state on the other?

This talk is part of the Political Ecology Group meetings series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• AUB_Cambridge Seminars
• Department of Geography
• Small Lecture Theatre, Department of Geography

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