Browsing by Author "Tironi, Manuel"

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    An Inside Sun: Lickanantay Volcanology in the Salar de Atacama
    (2022) Chocobar, Sonia Ramos; Tironi, Manuel
    The need of establishing more substantive dialogs between the mainstream and Indigenous knowledge on volcanoes has been increasingly recognized. To contribute to this endeavor, in this article we present the basic volcanological understandings of the Lickanantay people in the Salar de Atacama Basin. The Salar de Atacama Basin is an active volcanic territory within the Central Volcanic Zone of the Andes (CVZA). From the El Tatio geothermal field to Socompa volcano, more than 19 active volcanoes surround the territory that the Lickanantay (Atacameno) people have inhabited for more than 11,000 years. Living around and with the geological dynamism of the CVZA for millennia, the Lickanantay communities have accumulated rich observational and ceremonial data on volcanoes and volcanism. Paradoxically, however, while the Atacameno people have thoroughly characterized the CVZA, the volcanology community has not been properly introduced to the ancestral knowledge articulated in the territory. In order to make traditional Atacameno perspectives on volcanoes, volcanic risk, and geo-cosmic interdependence more amply available to the volcanology community, in this article, we present a basic description of what we call Atacameno volcanology. By Atacameno volcanology, we understand the ancestral principles by which volcanoes are known and understood as partaking in larger processes of a cosmo-ecological formation. Specifically, we describe the basic volcanological notions arising from the Lickanantay ancestral knowledge-volcanic formation, functions, and behavior. Second, we focus on the El Tatio geothermal field to offer a situated example. Finally, we delineate some relevant elements of human-volcano interactions and volcanic risk management from an Atacameno perspective. In our conclusions we suggest that volcanology, particularly in the context of the Andes, needs to engage more substantially with the Atacameno or other ancestral systems of knowledge production to expand volcanological insights and respond to the call for decolonizing science.
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    Bilbao's Art Scene and the "Guggenheim effect" Revisited
    (2009) Plaza, Beatriz; Tironi, Manuel; Haarich, Silke N.
    The article analyzes the effects of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao (GMB), adopting a new research perspective and trying to pursue the links between the museum and Bilbao's art scene. Until now, the impact of the museum has been analyzed from two different perspectives. The first focused on the urban development and regeneration aspects and the success of the museum as a tourist magnet and an image-making device. The second perspective concentrated on the direct economic benefits of the museum, i.e. direct returns and effects on the economy. The missing lens in previous analyses, however, was the impact of the museum on the city's art landscape, including the art support activities. In this context, the article describes for the first time in a detailed way how the GMB has contributed to the shaping and propulsion of changes on commercial and non-profit art spaces in Bilbao. Although it is clear that other factors may play a role, it can be asserted that the effects of the museum are not only limited to an increase in tourism or fiscal return, but also contribute to the development and spatial articulation of the local art scene and public support of the arts.
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    Disasters as meshworks: migratory birds and the enlivening of Donana's toxic spill
    (2014) Rodríguez Giralt, Israel; Tirado, Francisco; Tironi, Manuel
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    Enacting Music Scenes: Mobility, Locality and Cultural Production
    (ROUTLEDGE JOURNALS, TAYLOR & FRANCIS LTD, 2012) Tironi, Manuel
    Cluster theories assume 'locality' to be a bounded and fixed spatiality characterized by shared worlds-of-life, strong ties and co-presence. This paper contests the immobility of such a definition. Drawing on the case of Santiago's experimental music scene, in Chile, I argue for a mobile, transient and fluid approach to localized (cultural) economies. The empirical evidence indicates that Santiago's experimental music scene - an innovative and productive de facto cluster - performs (and unrolls) a decentered, episodic and itinerant geography enacted by porous, technologically mediated and contingent projects. These results call for new perspectives when thinking about economic innovation in general and cultural clusters within transitional cities in particular.
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    Extractivist droughts: Indigenous hydrosocial endurance in Quillagua, Chile
    (2022) Acuna, Valentina; Tironi, Manuel
    Extractivism is intensifying climate-induced water tensions in indigenous communities. As a response, climate sciences have acknowledged the capacity of Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) for the design and application of ad-hoc adaptation techniques and interventions. However, the mainstream literature on indigenous water-related adaptation has often presented TEK in ways that neglect the knowledge flexibility and its political role in community perseverance and indigenous resurgence. To expand on this analysis, we examine the case of the Aymara community of Quillagua in northern Chile in the context of "extractivist droughts," or water dispossession caused by the mining complex. Specifically, we describe how Quillaguenos and Quillaguenas articulate multiple strategies to resist against, co-exist with, and flourish in the face of the entwined effect of extractivism and colonialism on water, or what we call indigenous hydrosocial endurance. Drawing upon an ethnohistorical approach, we reconstruct the history of indigenous hydrosocial interventions articulated in Quillagua. Our results suggest that the Aymara community of Quillagua has resorted to four strategies to endure water dispossession over time: endurance by invention, reappropriation, ethnification, and tweaking. Each of these strategies responds to the specific and evolving hydro-political conditions produced by mining extraction that have affected indigenous livelihoods in the Atacama Desert since the 19th century. We conclude the article by arguing that adaptation literature and policy should acknowledge the embodied condition of indigenous knowledges; otherwise, it may be disempowering indigenous struggles against settler-colonialism.
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    Figuring disasters, an experiment on thinking disruptions as methods
    (2019) Tironi, Manuel; Bacigalupe, Gonzalo; Knowles, Scott Gabriel; Dickinson, Simon; Gil, Magdalena; Kelly, Sarah; Ludwig, Jason; Moesch, Jarah; Molina, Francisco; Palma, Karla; Siddiqi, Ayesha; Waldmueller,Johannes
    In this report, we reflect on the 2-day thinkshop ‘Figuring disasters: methodological speculations in exorbitant worlds’ held in Valparaíso, Chile. The thinkshop aimed at discussing the possibility of inventing new genres for the figuration, representation and visualisation of distributed and processual geoclimatic disruptions. For this report, we assembled a choral essay in which each one of the participants selected one object of our visit to Messana—an informal settlement in the outskirts of Valparaíso that was severely damaged by the 2017 fires—and knit around, from and with it a reflection on the thinkshop and its questions. The report is thus fractionary. We do not look for wholes, perhaps as disasters themselves problematise linear narratives. We prefer to be attentive to what each one of us inherited from Messana and to stage that sensibility in a multiplicity, though adventures into what disasters as methods can and should be.
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    Bude uncommon: extractivist endings and the unthinkable politics of conservation in Lafkenche territory
    (2021) Tironi, Manuel; Vega, Denisse; Antileo, Juan Roa
    Tubul-Raqui, in the Lafkenche territory of Arauco, southern Chile, is a wetland for conservation scientists and state officials, but a bude for Lafkenche people. Wetland and bude sometimes coincide, but they are also radically divergent. This paper, a collaboration between two scholars and a Lafkenche longko, is about the existential and political consequences of this disjuncture for Lafkenche life projects and struggles for self-determination. By chronicling two recent events in Tubul-Raqui - the implementation of a sustainable plan for wetland conservation and the 2010 tsunami - we argue that liberal conservation programs under the rubric of "sustainability," or what we call convivial conservation, only reinforce Indigenous disspossesion and extenuates Lafkenche lives. We show, as well, that the decolonization of conservation entails accounting for the plural meanings, practices, and temporalities of extinction - since death in Tubul-Raqui was not brought by the tsunami but by the extreme latency of extractivism, or what we call extractivist endings. We conclude by reflecting on the political trap faced by Lafkenche communities in Tubul-Raqui - the impossibilty to save the bude without converting it into a wetland - and to what extent this situation demands for a mode of politics that inhabits at the intersection between the plausible and the unconceivable - or what we call an unthinkable politics.
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    The Geo-Social Model: A Transdisciplinary Approach to Flow-Type Landslide Analysis and Prevention
    (2021) Acuna, Valentina; Roldan, Francisca; Tironi, Manuel; Juzam, Leila
    Landslide disaster risks increase worldwide, particularly in urban areas. To design and implement more effective and democratic risk reduction programs, calls for transdisciplinary approaches have recently increased. However, little attention has been paid to the actual articulation of transdisciplinary methods and their associated challenges. To fill this gap, we draw on the case of the 1993 Quebrada de Macul disaster, Chile, to propose what we label as the Geo-Social Model. This experimental methodology aims at integrating recursive interactions between geological and social factors configuring landslide for more robust and inclusive analyses and interventions. It builds upon three analytical blocks or site-specific environments in constant co-determination: (1) The geology and geomorphology of the study area; (2) the built environment, encompassing infrastructural, urban, and planning conditions; and (3) the sociocultural environment, which includes community memory, risk perceptions, and territorial organizing. Our results are summarized in a geo-social map that systematizes the complex interactions between the three environments that facilitated the Quebrada de Macul flow-type landslide. While our results are specific to this event, we argue that the Geo-Social Model can be applied to other territories. In our conclusions, we suggest, first, that landslides in urban contexts are often the result of anthropogenic disruptions of natural balances and systems, often related to the lack of place-sensitive urban planning. Second, that transdisciplinary approaches are critical for sustaining robust and politically effective landslide risk prevention plans. Finally, that inter- and trans-disciplinary approaches to landslide risk prevention need to be integrated into municipal-level planning for a better understanding of-and prevention of-socio-natural hazards.
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    The Lost Community?Public Housing and Social Capital in Santiago de Chile, 1985-2001
    (WILEY, 2009) Tironi, Manuel
    Chile has achieved a dramatic reduction in material poverty since 1990, in part through a massive programme of state-subsidized housing that has almost eliminated slums, especially in Santiago. Sceptics assert that the improvement in material conditions has been accompanied by a decline in the cohesion and quality of 'community' in poor neighbourhoods. This article challenges this assertion, using data from a 1985 survey conducted in poblaciones (i.e. public housing dating from the 1960s) and a 2001 survey conducted in newly built public housing or villas. In contrast to popular wisdom, these surveys suggest that villas score higher than poblaciones in most indicators of social capital analyzed. Finally, this article contends that in order to comprehend the relation between poverty, space and community, more networked and decentred analytical approaches are needed.
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    Worlding hydropower: river realities in the Chilean Patagonia*
    (2019) Hernando-Arrese, Maite; Tironi, Manuel
    Based on the case of HidroAysen, in this paper we discuss the different modes of existence of a hydroelectric project. Inspired by an ontological sensibility and the idea of worlding, we sustain that hydroelectric energy is embedded in, and is the source of, multiple worlds where different ontologies of water and energy meet, not always peacefully. Drawing on in-depth interviews and documentary sources, we identify three worlds or realities - yet not entirely autonomous - in which the HidroAysen project exists: the National Hydropower World, the Market Hydropower World, and the Sustainable Hydropower World. We argue that these three realities, through different ecologies, knowledge, and narratives, execute different parameters of reality and objectivity. Our final argument is that an ontological approach to analyze hydropower development and the conflicts that it has spurred can stimulate new ways of thinking about taken-for-granted assumptions, categories, and practices regarding the way hydropower is or might be produced.