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My PhD research aims to advance discussions on the interplay between reproduction, environment and power, by investigating the reproduction of life in the toxic geography of Cerro de Pasco -a historic mining site in Peru and a pivotal node of racial capitalism in the Americas. As centuries of mining manifest in bodily and territorial toxic devastations, residents grapple with anxieties about the health and reproduction not only of humans but of a range of living systems. Focusing on the intimate domains of body, emotion and home, this research combines ethnographic methods (interviews and participant information), visual methodologies and archival work, to account for how residents sense and experience the toxins’ mobilities across scales, how this influences the reorganisation of the labour needed to sustain life, and how it guides their politics of engagement with or resistance to the mine. The research contributes to nascent interdisciplinary theorizations of the interplay between reproductive politics and environmental politics, commonly understood as distinct areas of inquiry. It also sheds new light on the study of extractivism, capitalism, and environmental degradation. Besides its academic relevance, foregrounding the relationships between reproduction, environment and power can be productive to build coalition politics across social movements in this and other damaged worlds.
