Author Description

"In For Emplacement Mario Blaser argues that in a world marked by increased displacement of peoples, the infrastructures created to deal with issues of displacement weaken and undermine the infrastructures created to encourage emplacement. Blaser draws from personal experiences and fieldwork in Latin America and Canada, asking what he posits is a political question: how do we live together well? For Blaser, potentially fruitful answers to this key question come in finding a balance between emplacement and displacement by grappling with a political ontology that embraces the multiplicities of our world. Structuring the book as if it were a theatrical play, Blaser uses the volume's prelude to analyze the limits and boundaries between emplacement and displacement before moving into the ethnographic exploration of infrastructures of emplacement and displacement amongst the Yshiro people in Act I. The interlude makes clear the dominance of displacement infrastructure, while Act II returns once more to ethnography to examine formations of power and the role of science in the emplaced Innu communities of Canada. The concluding postlude provides opportunities to apply Blaser's theorization of political ontology, displacement, and emplacement onto other specific communities throughout the world"--