Abstract

With falling prices and improving technology, drones have gone mainstream. Their use is no longer limited to barely acknowledged military missions. In addition to becoming yet another fashionable gadget for affluent consumers, they have found a variety of uses around the world for progressive causes. This presentation focuses on one such example, the deployment of drones (together with other ‘frugal but advanced’ hardware and software) to enhance community-based environmental monitoring of the impacts of oil extraction in the Ecuadorian Amazon. It will seek to answer two related questions: What types of epistemological assumptions and implications accompany the coupling of ‘advanced technologies’ with indigenous knowledge? To what extent can such combinations help dismantle existing structural inequalities between affected communities on the one side and corporations and the state on the other?