This edited collection contextualizes the current production of extractive labor in Latin America due to the political, historical, social, and economic effects of neoliberal policies and geopolitics. According to the editors, “The main objective of this edited collection is to inaugurate a research agenda aimed at filling an enormous gap concerning the question of labor in the extant literature on extractivism in Latin America” (p. 4). The editors organized this collection into five critical sections, bringing together 11 scholars. The writers challenge capitalist and neoliberal scholarship on the political status of 21st-century labor production in Latin America. Each chapter provides a strong, in-depth review and analysis, including theoretical frameworks that are critical for understanding extraction in modern Latin American labor production. This critical book will result in major contributions to future scholarship on this important subject. Every library should obtain a copy for their Latin American and labor collections. Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty.

Choice Reviews

This book demonstrates that the expansion of natural resource extraction not only comes at a price for rural communities, the environment, and Latin American economies. It also comes at a cost for workers who labor in those extractive industries. It shows how export workers in strategic sectors occupy a crucial place for building broad-based anti-capitalist movements in Latin America. The Labor of Extraction in Latin America analyzes the very struggles that are central to the future of Latin America and the world.

Steve Striffler, professor, University of Massachussetts, Boston

This book takes on the hugely important task of bringing the workers back in to the study of extractive accumulation in Latin America. With a comprehensive theoretical framework and detailed case studies that both mobilize and extend it, this volume lays out an exciting new research agenda for the study of Latin American political economy.

Christy Thornton, assistant professor, Johns Hopkins University

In the abundant recent scholarship on Latin America’s extractive export economies, the labor required to harvest those exports has been curiously overlooked. This pathbreaking volume shows how we can integrate an analysis of extractive labor with the currently more popular lenses of ecology and social reproduction.

Kevin A. Young, associate professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst