The rent of dispossession: From classical extractivism to the formation of extractive-rentier patterns in Latin America

Abstract

The article makes a critical review of the theoretical formulations that discuss the conformation of extractivismo models in Latin America whose theme has gained academic and political relevance in recent decades due to the deepening of the dispossession of natural assets and the socio-environmental conflicts that characterize said model and whose roots seem to take shape both in left and right governments. Around these concerns, land rent appears as a theoretical tool capable of explaining the reprimarization and desindustrialization processes that the Latin America productive platform has been experiencing since the 1970s. In this sense, it is proposed to think of land rent as a key category in the conformation of, what we call, the Latin American extractive-rentier patterns that, in turn, allows us to think about the construction of alternatives to said model.