Disasters, inequalities, violence and democratization processes

Abstract

The article discusses the significance of violence in the emergence, maintenance, and erosion of socio-ecological orders. It focuses on the interconnection between violence against marginalized communities affected by the rapid expansion of often criminal forms of primitive accumulation promoted or directly implemented by governments and multinational private actors, often with the tacit or explicit support from international institutions whose original mandate has been to preserve peace and promote universal development. It still presents evidence of the global impact of environment-related conflict and violence, complemented with empirical examples from Latin America, related to the expansion of extractivist activities and the unequally distributed impacts of extreme geophysical or weather-related events, among other, which continue to prompt widespread and multiple forms of social resistance. The author emphasizes the production of structural inequality and injustice through systematically organized violence and criminalization of social actors who aim to defend their territories, livelihoods, and basic rights. The argument highlights the fundamental contradiction between the discursive commitment to democratic principles and processes by governments and international institutions, and the illegalities and violent atrocities committed on the ground against defenseless communities. It discusses the challenges faced by social scientists to produce more advanced and complex understandings and explanations of these processes that may contribute towards the construction of more humane socio-ecological orders.

Keywords: Socio-ecological violences. Socio-ecological orders. Democratization processes. Structural inequality and injustice. Latin America.