Soberanías fronterizas: Estados y capital en la colonización de Patagonia (Argentina y Chile, 1830–1922)

Alberto Harambour is a central figure in the growing scholarship from the humanities and social sciences on Patagonia. Whereas the region has attracted the insightful work of literary scholars who deconstructed the writings of travelers in this still-mythic land, others have recently sought to engage the history of state formation, economic and political development, and the often-violent means used to incorporate Patagonia into the Argentine and Chilean nation-states. Some of these scholars have focused on environmental and animal studies, two fields that underlie but do not figure prominently in Harambour's analysis. Rather, he deconstructs the rise of a transregional oligarchy rooted in the wool industry as the operative political and economic force in the Patagonian frontier at the turn of the century. In particular, the book focuses on southern Patagonia's steppe, including the broader Magallanes region, Santa Cruz and Tierra del Fuego,...