To respect ethnic groups so thta they may become productive: agroindustry, social and environmental harm and neoliberal multiculturalism

Abstract

From a green criminological perspective, the present article addresses the social and environmental harms associated with palm oil production in the southern part of the Colombian Pacific region. The indigenous and Afro-Colombian communities that inhabit this region are endowed with a set of specific cultural rights and collective entitlements to their lands. This should allow to challenge and in due course overcome hegemonic notions and practices of legality that exclude from meaningful debate and the ambit of juridical and political action the types of harm by which Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities are disproportionately affected. However, in the current situation there is neither substantive debate of these harms nor can Afro-Colombian and indigenous communities effectively exercise the cultural, political, and economic autonomy they were formally granted. I draw on the concept of ‘neoliberal multiculturalism’ (Hale, 2007) to shed light on this problematic.