Riccarda Flemmer es investigadora postdoctoral y profesora de la cátedra de Ciencias Políticas, especialmente de Gobernanza Global, en la Universidad de Hamburgo (Alemania). Es doctora en Relaciones Internacionales por la Universidad de Hamburgo. Riccarda tiene una formación interdisciplinar en ciencias políticas, sociología y psicología. Su investigación se centra en la transformación participativa de conflictos, las normas legales impugnadas, los derechos humanos y los conflictos socioecológicos con un enfoque geográfico en la Amazonia, especialmente en Perú. Desde junio de 2020, Riccarda es copresidenta de la sección de la Amazonia de la Asociación de Estudios Latinoamericanos.

2019 Doctorado (Dr. phil.) en Ciencia Política, Universidad de Hamburgo
2012 Magister Artium en Ciencia Política, RWTH University Aachen

desde 05/2021 investigador asociada a trAndeS
desde 03/2020 co-docente e traductora de Patricia Gualinga, representante indígena de Sarayaku, Ecuador para el Kulturbüro Grupo Sal
04/2020–05/2021 docente e investigadora, Universidad de Hamburgo
04/2017–02/2019 doctoranda, GIGA Hamburgo
01/2016–03/2017 investigadora doctoral, Universidad Bielefeld
09/2013–12/2015 investigadora doctoral en el proyecto “Consultation, Participation, and the Transformation of Conflict. A Comparative Study of Resource Extraction in Bolivia and Peru.”, GIGA Hamburg
10/2012–08/2013 Becaria (Landesgraduiertenförderung), Hamburgo
09/2012–12/2012 organización simposio internacional “Prior Consultation in Latin America”, Congreso de la Red Latinoamericana de Antropología Jurídica en Bolivia, Ministerio Federal de Cooperación Económica y Desarrollo (BMZ)
02/2011–04/2011 Pasantía en la Defensoría del Pueblo en Lima, Perú
12/2010–02/2011 Pasantía en el Instituto Alemán de Políticas de Desarrollo (DIE), Bonn

The Contested Meaning of Prior Consultation and FPIC. Indigenous Grassroots and the Politics of Translating Rights in Struggles over Resources in the Peruvian Amazon

Over ten years after the adoption of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, defining prior consultation and the right to free, prior and informed consent (FPIC) is a central controversy between indigenous peoples and state governments in Latin America. Based on material from ethnographic fieldwork in the Peruvian Amazon (2013–2015), this article argues that a neglected aspect in politics and in academia is that the observed consultation processes bear all the weight of the (inter)national tug-of-war between the competing interpretations of prior consultation and FPIC. These struggles over the meaning of indigenous rights are embedded into historical and multi-sited politics of translating international law into local contexts and are characteristic for a “new generation of recognition politics” (Larsen 2016) in Latin America. Zooming in on hydrocarbon consultations in the Amazon, I illustrate how normative meaning was constituted in asymmetric local arenas characterized by old and new power asymmetries between the Peruvian state and indigenous communities. More specifically, I show two layers of contested meaning –visible, discursively expressed contestation as well as the invisible, sociocultural meaning of prior consultation and FPIC. In a final critical reflection, I point out structural components of prior consultation and FPIC limiting their capacity to be effective tools for indigenous peoples’ participation. Conceptually, the article draws on critical literature on contested norms from international relations theory (Wiener 2008, 2014; Zimmermann 2016), anthropology (Goodale/Merry 2007; McNeish/ Borchgrevink/Logan 20 15; Wilson 1997), and decolonial studies on “Law from Below” (Santos/ Rodríguez-Garavito 2005; Eckert et al. 2012).