Endangered Salares: micro-disasters in Northern Chile.

ABSTRACT: This article emerges from a transdisciplinary collaboration between a micro-biologist and an anthropologist deeply concerned with the protection of endangered salares (saltpans) in northern Chile. Our aim is to establish the concept of "micro-disaster" as a tool for examining how extractivism is disrupting salares and their "deep-time" microbial ecologies. These ecologies are key for understanding early events on Earth, as their evolution enabled the oxygenation of the planet 2.5 billion years ago and caused the biodiversity explosion. By considering how being human involves being microorganismal - and how human time is entangled with microorganismic time -, this article connects neoliberal extractivist history with geo-biological evolutionary hist

SUBMITTER: Bonelli C 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8887917 | biostudies-literature | 2021

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature