معرفی
Aníbal Arregui is a Research Fellow affiliated with the University of Rostock, with prior association to the University of Barcelona. His work focuses on the socio-environmental impacts of extractive industries on marginalized communities, particularly quilombola populations in the Amazon. His research integrates biopolitical theory with ethnographic studies to analyze the interplay between industrial extraction, environmental governance, and traditional lifeways. Arregui conducted fieldwork between 2007 and 2009 in the Trombetas Basin, investigating the effects of the Mineração Rio do Norte (MRN) bauxite mine on the Boa Vista quilombola community.
His research interests include environmental anthropology, biopolitics, and the socio-technical transformations wrought by extractive capitalism. He explores how mining operations disrupt traditional body techniques, land use practices, and communal infrastructures like slash-and-burn agriculture (roçados) and flour houses (casa da farinha). Arregui’s work highlights the entanglement of corporate and state environmental policies with the erosion of quilombola cultural and ecological sovereignty.
Key findings include the mine’s role in disciplining workers’ bodies through surveillance and medical protocols, while simultaneously naturalizing the Amazon as a ‘protected’ space that excludes traditional extractivism. His analysis underscores the neoliberalization of nature and the disarticulation of quilombola socio-technical systems.
Funding for his work came from a PhD grant (Generalitat de Catalunya, University of Barcelona) and a postdoctoral contract (DFG-GK, University of Rostock). His research contributes to broader debates on biopolitics, environmental justice, and the politics of technology in global extractive economies.