Geographies of Difference, Indifference and Mis-difference: The Guarani-Kaiowa People and the Myths of Brazilian Development

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World-renowned scholar of human geography, development, and environmental change Antonio Ioris presents an original reconceptualisation of the notions of difference and indifference and their impacts on social structures.

Drawing on a wide range of philosophical debates, and offering groundbreaking new insights into geographically specific trends through the lens of indigenous geographies, Ioris explores how political actors use notions of difference to foster indifference for the purposes of domination, which ultimately crystallizes in what he terms mis-difference: a calcified, difficult-to-overcome obstacle to concord and fairness that underpins capitalist relations of property and production. At the same time, Ioris shows how some social actors use the concept of difference for reconciliation, for overcoming indifference and mis-difference, and suggests how these moves can help to fight against ideologies that produce our unequal world and facilitate land-grabs. Ioris elucidates all of this in concrete terms through a study of the Guarani-Kaiowa people in Brazil: of how they have been oppressed by state-sanctioned indifference and misdifference, and of how they are resisting through a contestation of what difference can mean, and how it can function, in the contemporary world.

Reviews

Difference has long been a buzzword in both the theoretical and practical worlds. But Geographies of Difference takes this term in an entirely new direction by connecting it with Hegel rather than the usual suspects. In a groundbreaking and exhilarating book, Antonio Ioris links indigenous difference to the contradictions of capitalism globalization. In the process, he shows that Hegel is the thinker we need to bring this difference to light. After Geographies of Difference, we can no longer think of difference or of Hegel in the same way again. * Todd McGowan, author Emancipation after Hegel, University of Vermont, USA *
Out of the meeting between Hegelian phenomenology and the consciousness born out of the struggle of Amerindian peoples a new sense of spacetime is born. Antonio Ioris's Geographies of Difference not only rewrites the theoretical and practical debates around notions of difference and indifference, particular and universal, essence and existence, but also the very orientation of philosophy and peoples' rights. If philosophy is to have a role in the construction of a new humanity, this is it. * Oscar Guardiola-Rivera, Birkbeck College, University of London, UK *

Author Bio

Antonio Augusto Rossotto Ioris is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Cardiff, UK. He has previously been the author or editor of 24 books, including recent works on the Amazon and on indigenous studies such as Kaiowcide: Living through the Guarani-Kaiowa Genocide (2021). He has managed several international projects around the situation faced by the Guarani-Kaiowa indigenous population.