Land vigilance and the deterritorialization in traditional communities in Bahia

Abstract

This article discusses how capitalist expansion regimes, during times of crisis, wage wars to legitimize the surveillance and control of territories. The analysis is based on the advancing mining industry within traditional communities in Bahia. Grounded in discursive theory, the work draws on the theoretical framework of Foucault (1988, 2005, 2008a, 2008b, 2008c, 2010, 2014, 2018, 2021) and articulates it with the contributions of authors such as Lenin (2012), Mészáros (1930), Agamben (2017), Lazzarato (2015, 2021), and Barad (2017), among others. Our findings reveal the dimension of the “war machine of capital” (Alliez & Lazzarato, 2021; Deleuze, Guattari, 2012) as it advances through mining in Bahia. These processes promote land surveillance as the core mechanism of capitalist expansion, creating an economy driven by a logic of domination and dependency that produces a “smooth” way of living. The monopolization of natural resources, transformed into economic products and private capital, operates through governmentalization devices. The surveillance and control of land establish norms of conduct that restrict the use of space, water, and soil, configuring a biopolitical regime that legitimizes the exercise of violence and deterritorialization.