The notion of political constellations is addressed through two approaches. A) The analysis of the role of elites, as actors of territorial governance structures, in the processes of wealth accumulation and land control. It is assumed that land as a productive factor still plays a key role in the accumulation of wealth and the formation of elites even on a territorial scale; 21st century dynamics such as land grabbing or forms of access to strategic locations and spaces due to their subsoil resources are analyzed. B) The articulation between actors involved in extractive mining activities and agrarian elites, through relationships that mediate ownership and access to land. It is assumed that the expansion of extractive industries, linked to metallic mining, places “territory” in a field of tension and political dispute over land, where transnational mining actors acquire vast extensions of land to develop large-scale projects, which expand the capital of former local agrarian elites. Second, it addresses ecological transformations, material impacts on the environment and ecosystems, by focusing on how new financial mechanisms of compensation or payments for environmental services can also be ways of producing new multi-scale elites or reaffirming old elites, who align themselves with discourses of green washing, sustainability, or environmental responsibility. The analyses and case studies of the project focus on the Andean region.
