Editorial Not-quite-neoliberal natures in Latin America: An introduction Corin de Freitas a , Andrea J. Marston a,b,⇑ , Karen Bakker a a Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, 1984 West Mall, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2, Canada b Geography Department, University of California at Berkeley, 507 McCone Hall, Berkeley, CA 94709, USA article info Article history: Received 18 October 2014 Received in revised form 26 May 2015 Accepted 28 May 2015 Available online 17 June 2015 Keywords: Neoliberalism Post-neoliberalism Environmental governance Latin America abstract This paper introduces the concept of ‘not-quite-neoliberal natures’ in relation to contemporary theoret- ical debates and Latin American political processes. The phrase is meant to signal both our appreciation of and reservations about theoretical elaborations of neoliberalism, post- neoliberalism, and (post-)neoliberal natures in relation to the wide variety of reforms currently transforming resource gov- ernance in Latin America. After reviewing theoretical debates about (post-)neoliberalism and situating them within Latin American history, we present the major themes emerging across the papers in this spe- cial issue: (1) the prevalence of concomitant and overlapping political processes, (2) the productivity of tensions and contradictions, particularly with respect to the state-society relationship, and (3) dynamism, or an insistence on the depth and liveliness of ‘context’ and ‘contestation’. Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Recent Latin American history has introduced a series of com- plications into prevalent understandings of neoliberalization and post-neoliberalization. Perhaps nowhere is this clearer than in Bolivia, where widespread mobilization in the early 2000s led to the election of Evo Morales – South America’s first indigenous-identifying president – and an apparent rejection of the neoliberal governance model. In August 2011, however, the contradictions of so-called post-neoliberal policies were brought to light when more than 500 indigenous Bolivians set out on a March of over 350 miles from Trinidad, a city in the eastern low- lands, to the nation’s highland capital of La Paz. The marchers were protesting the construction of a highway that was going to bifur- cate TIPNIS (Territorio Indígena y Parque Nacional Isiboro Sécure), a protected national park and indigenous territory belong- ing to the Yuracaré, Moxeño, and Chimán peoples. The Morales administration claimed that the highway would increase national connectivity and economic productivity by facilitating the move- ment of goods between La Paz, Trinidad, and Brazil. The protestors, however, felt that the highway was more likely to increase defor- estation by cocaleros (coca-leaf cultivators), serve as a drug trade route with Brazil, and facilitate exploitation of TIPNIS hydrocarbon deposits by Brazilian companies. Moreover, they were furious that their recently won right to prior consultation regarding activities that would affect their territories – guaranteed in the 2009 Bolivian Constitution – had been (in their view) summarily ignored (Hines, 2011; Webber, 2012). Commentators were divided: was the TIPNIS highway evidence of ongoing accumulation by dispos- session, now driven by Brazilian neo-imperialist investors but otherwise identical to neoliberal practices that characterized the 1980s and 1990s, or was it indeed (as government officials sought to portray it) a post-neoliberal strategy focused on uniting national territory and generating wealth for redistributive social programs? This example underscores the ambiguity of both putatively neoliberal modes of resource governance and their post-neoliberal alternatives. In Latin America, resource governance practices that might be characterized as neoliberal, post-neoliberal, and something-else-entirely coexist simultaneously, and they pre- sent us with a conceptual challenge: how can we characterize these ‘‘not-quite-neoliberal’’ natures, and how might they push a more general re-theorization of the processes of (post-)neoliberalization in Latin America – and beyond? 1. Introduction The ‘neoliberalization of nature’ is one of the most controversial topics in contemporary environmental management. The past few decades have witnessed a rapid increase in the involvement of pri- vate corporations in resource ownership, biotechnological innova- tion, and the provision of market trading mechanisms for (proxy) ecosystem services. Simultaneously, markets (and market proxies) have been deployed as mechanisms of environmental governance at multiple scales. Advocates present these developments as a wel- come ‘greening’ of capitalism that will resolve critically urgent http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2015.05.021 0016-7185/Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding author at: Geography Department, University of California at Berkeley, 507 McCone Hall, Berkeley, CA 94709, USA. E-mail addresses: corin.defreitas@geog.ubc.ca (C. de Freitas), ajmarston@ berkeley.edu (A.J. Marston), karen.bakker@ubc.ca (K. Bakker). Geoforum 64 (2015) 239–245 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Geoforum journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum