The posterity of the crisis: Notes on the socio-ecological contradictions of the salmon industry in Chile

Abstract

The historical moments that we identify as "critical junctures" or "precipitating factors" are especially productive because they open up possibilities of analyzing paths to the utopia of choice or else they confront us with the inertia of collapse. In this tension, I propose to advance in an idea of posterity, or afterlives, with high historical and territorial specificity that allows us an inductive exercise that calibrates the macro-structural positions, on the one hand, and the micro-activist ones, on the other, in the face of the environmental issue and its social conflicts. In particular, I wonder if it is possible to understand what happens after a critical event as a turning point in terms of environmental governance, or a posterity as a recovery of normality. Put differently, it is the distinction between assuming a "post" overcoming and a "neo" deepening of schemes of action that seek legitimization, reintegrating the past in the key of survival and learning. For this, I offer below some reflections based on my experience researching structural and interpretative aspects of the salmon industry in the Chiloé Archipelago and its two major crises in 2008 and 2016.