The Politics of Precarity Spaces of Extractivism, Violence, and Suffering

Engaging the work of Judith Butler, Henri Lefebvre, and Jacque Rancière with ethnographic research on socio-political effects of mining-induced dispossession in Mozambique, Lesutis demonstrates how precarity unfolds as a spatially constituted condition of everyday life given over to the violence of capital. Going beyond labour relations, or governance of life in liberal democracies, the book shows how dispossessed people are subjected to structural, symbolic, and direct modalities of violence; this simultaneously constitutes their suffering and ceaseless desire, however implausible, to be included into abstract space of extractivism. As a result, despite multifarious violence that it engenders, extractive capital accumulation is sustained even in the margins, historically excluded from contingently lived imaginaries of a "good life" promised by capital.
Presenting this theorisation of precarity as a framework on, and a critique of, the contemporary politics of (un)liveability, the book speaks to key debates about precarity, dispossession, resistance, extractivism, and development in several disciplines, especially political geography, IPE, global politics, and critical theory. It will also be of interest to scholars in development studies, critical political economy, and African politics.
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