Keywords
Jesuit-guarani missions
Technology of government
Economic theology
Economy and religion
How to Cite
Abstract
This paper analyzes the economic dimension of the Jesuit-Guarani missions in colonial South America from a Foucauldian-Agambenian perspective. It explores the deployment of a complex technology of economic hiper-efficientism that (co-)governed the missions. Based on a genealogical research approach, the paper argues that the technology operated not only through the Jesuit rules on administrative efficiency already discussed in the existing literature, but also through the Company of Jesus’ (crypto-)economic logics of efficientism and effectivism, a series of techniques adjusted to the missions’ realities and a spectrum of Indigenous resistances. The analysis of such a complex technology of government is put forth as a contribution for the literature on the economic history of the missions, critical studies on governmentality in/ from Latin America, and the debates on the continuities, transformations, and ruptures between the religious history of South America and its political and economic dimensions in the present time.
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Copyright (c) 2021 Edgar Zavala Pelayo
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