Back

ICFRC: Three Faces of Growth: Development and the Politics of Abundance in Peru's Andes

Listen to an audio podcast of this program.

Join us online for a program with Eric Hirsch, who speaks to us on "Three Faces of Growth: Development and the Politics of Abundance in Peru's Andes".

This talk presents some of the key findings from Hirsch's current book project. It is based on long term fieldwork in the Peruvian Andes during the 2010s, an era when Peru's economy saw astronomical aggregate growth due to simultaneous booms in extractive industry, gastronomy, and tourism. Hirsch explores the question of growth: in rural villages at the Andean margins of Peru's economic boom, what does it mean to experience economic growth as a daily fact of life? What does it actually look like? How does it feel? How, in other words, are people supposed to know that their country is growing? Hirsch follows three distinct development projects that are invested in recruiting rural villagers to the collective enactment of Peruvian economic growth as its newest entrepreneurs: one from the Peruvian Ministry of Agriculture and Irrigation, one from a non-governmental organization, and one from a mining corporation.

Eric Hirsch is an environmental and economic anthropologist whose research focuses on climate change, development, and how marginalized communities build their livelihoods. Most of his field research has taken place in Peru, particularly the southern Andean Colca Valley, and the cities of Arequipa and Lima. Hirsch has conducted additional research in the Maldives and the US. His current book project, Acts of Growth: Development and the Politics of Abundance in Peru (under contract with Stanford University Press) investigates economic growth as a shared understanding that comes alive through face-to-face interaction in rural Peru.

Hirsch's second major project delves more directly into the issue of climate change as a fact of daily life. In collaboration with the Barcelona-based project "Local Indicators of Climate Change Impacts," the project works to center how non-Western scientific observations in rural communities contribute to those communities' responses to climate change. Hirsch has published his research in journals including Latin American and Caribbean Ethnic Studies, the Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology, Geoforum, and Global Environmental Change.

For more information on the Foreign Relations Council visit their website at www.icfrc.org.

Related Programs

thumbnail of video

ICFRC: Living in Ukraine: My Story of an Unbreakable Nation
Recorded: August 24, 2023
Runtime: 01:05:41

thumbnail of video

ICFRC: How the Young Generation of African Political and Business Leaders are Carrying Nelson Mandela's Legacy
Recorded: July 19, 2023
Runtime: 01:27:50

thumbnail of video

ICFRC: Earth Day in the Pacific
Recorded: April 19, 2023
Runtime: 01:16:34

thumbnail of video

ICFRC: Tik Tok, Boom
Recorded: April 12, 2023
Runtime: 00:32:05

thumbnail of video

ICFRC: Narrative Making and the Politics of Juxtaposition
Recorded: April 5, 2023
Runtime: 00:59:35

thumbnail of video

ICFRC: Peace Corps Volunteer Service as a 50-Year-Old
Recorded: March 29, 2023
Runtime: 00:57:39

thumbnail of video

ICFRC: We Were Ever Here: Chinese Exchange Students in Iowa, 1909-1937
Recorded: March 22, 2023
Runtime: 00:58:20

thumbnail of video

ICFRC: Islamic Feminism and Women's Rights
Recorded: March 8, 2023
Runtime: 01:04:22

thumbnail of video

ICFRC: Cedar Rapids' Afghan Community, 18 Months On
Recorded: March 1, 2023
Runtime: 01:01:37