Advanced Diploma in Critical Studies on Free Trade and Extractivism

• Class 1: Free trade as a historical form of class antagonism
  Teacher: Rodrigo Pascual
  
  This class presents a series of theoretical and conceptual tools that allow us to understand free trade as an expression of class antagonism, as a concrete historical form of the accumulation of global capital, and the territorial forms that the struggle between capital and labor takes.
  
  
• Class 2: The historical forms of free trade. From GATT to international arbitration
  Teacher: Luciana Ghiotto
  
  This class explores the different historical moments in which trade crystallized. In this chapter, we will examine the configuration of the GATT as an expression of class struggle within the framework of welfare states and the transition to neoliberal globalization in the World Trade Organization. We will also observe the crisis of the multilateral system and the new systems of arbitration and global regulations for “legal certainty.”
  
  
• Class 3: Free Trade Agreements, Bilateral Investment Treaties and the International Arbitration System
  Teachers: Luciana Ghiotto and Ana Saggioro García
  
  In this class, we will examine in detail each of the aspects addressed in the various current forms of free trade, their operational mechanisms, and the main theoretical and media approaches to the topic. We will also explore some lines of inquiry regarding the development of investment agreements within the BRICS framework, analyzing South-South relations.

• Class 4: Free Trade and Development?
  Teacher: Alhelí González Cáceres
  
  This session seeks to revisit debates on development and the specific ways in which capitalist social relations unfold in Latin America, dismantling the conventional narrative that presents free trade as the engine or lever necessary for achieving development. Instead, it aims to reveal how the mechanisms of the global market and the global power relations that emerge from them operate, simultaneously producing and reproducing developed and dependent economies, like two sides of the same coin.
  
  
• Class 5: The faces of free trade in Latin America: Extractivism and class struggle
  Teachers: Alhelí González Cáceres and Carla Poth
  
  The aim of this class is to examine the historical development of extractivism in Latin America from a class-antagonism perspective. Specifically, it will explore concepts related to the various ways in which capital incorporates the environment into its accumulation dynamics and the resulting class-struggle conflicts. The class will provide theoretical tools that define the relationship between free trade and extractivism, enabling a cross-scalar debate on transitions and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
  
  
• Class 6: How to think about fair trade?
  Teacher: Fiorella Ricagno
  
  The proposal of this class is to analyze multiple regional and global commercial experiences that, from the perspective of ecological justice, question the limits of the dominant economic paradigm, make visible the interdependencies between nature, work and care, and problematize the asymmetries that permeate commercial exchanges; in light of a series of conceptual frameworks associated with Ecological Economics, Good Living, Ecofeminism and Bioeconomy.
  The proposal is structured around a panel discussion with representatives from organizations that develop fair trade initiatives, aiming to connect theoretical frameworks with concrete practices. The panel will conclude by exploring the intersections between these experiences and the perspectives discussed, identifying tensions, lessons learned, and potential for building alternative trade models focused on sustainability, equity, and the expanded reproduction of life.

• Class 7: Reconfiguration of territories in free trade
  Teacher: Álvaro Álvarez
  
  In a context of multiple crises and the metabolic collapse of capital, this study seeks to theoretically problematize the spatial construction of capitalist extraction, production, circulation, and consumption, critically examining the notion of territory. In this sense, concepts will be introduced that allow us to consider macro-technical systems—primarily infrastructure—as social and power relations, identifying how they currently express the dynamics of accumulation in Latin America. Likewise, the study aims to understand the restructuring of territory—the vertical reorganization of the region—and, based on this, the reconfiguration of economic, political, environmental, and social links and scales.
  
  
• Class 8: Expansion of extractivism - new spaces of accumulation: between the commons and the production of commodities
  Teacher: Andrea Taborri
  
  The aim of this class is to problematize the strategies of capital production by analyzing the dynamics of dispossession and the configuration of new spaces for accumulation. To this end, some of the fundamental concepts that allow us to understand the development of so-called green capitalism are examined in order to observe the political and economic strategies with which it unfolds in different territories. The class proposes to analyze how accumulation by dispossession generates new niches for the production of capitalist profits.
  
  
• Class 9: Reconfigurations in community structures. An approach to the problems of work and gender within the framework of extractive free trade
  Teacher: Carla Poth
  
  This class proposes to analyze how the new dynamics of free trade and the expansion of extractive activities are reshaping community organizing strategies in local territories, affecting local economies, institutional structures, and forms of work and care organization. The proposal for this class is to create a roundtable discussion with local organizations to explore these processes through concrete experiences and the challenges they face.

• Class 10: Reconfiguration of the State: regulatory and legal frameworks
  Teacher: Carla Poth
  
  This class provides a brief theoretical introduction that allows us to consider the State as a political form of capital accumulation. In this way, we seek to understand how the new dynamics of free trade, expressed in its extractive forms in our territories, restructure the rules of the game and the functioning of the State to facilitate the movement of capital and goods, guaranteeing legal security.
  
  
• Class 11: Transnationalization of Law? A theoretical approach to the conflict between international law and national legality
  Teacher: Juan Camilo Sarmiento Lobo
  
  The objective of this class is to reflect and empathize from the Latin American legal critique about the global normative system of commerce, understood as a framework that shapes and generates concrete changes on state legal systems, colliding with the alternative law constituted and arranged from the Territories and their Peoples.
  
  
• Class 12: Free Trade, Extractivism and Democracy?
  Teacher: Carla Poth
  
  The purpose of this class is to discuss, from a critical perspective on democracy, current trends in democratic relations. Alongside the discourse of the free movement of capital, there has been a rise in state intervention and military projects, the criminalization and militarization of protests, and the radical concentration of media ownership. How do these issues affect the forms of democracy (and the dynamics of social participation)? How is it possible to reconcile free trade and modern democracy?

• Class 13: Where is Latin America headed? A look at the production and trade of our common goods in turbulent times
  Teacher: Darío Clemente
  
  This course proposes to analyze Latin America's place in the current reconfiguration of global capitalism, within a context of multiple crises that are driving new accumulation strategies. From this perspective, it examines how capitalism seeks to resolve its contradictions by generating new production and trade networks, in which the region occupies a strategic role as a provider of common goods and a battleground for major powers. The notions of global “value” chains, energy transition, logistical rationality, and “digital capitalism” are addressed not as a way of overcoming extractivism, but as a reformulation of it in a new stage of the continent's integration into the global market. Far from breaking with the historical logic of dependent insertion, these dynamics tend to deepen the asymmetries in the international division of labor and territorial disputes in times of increasing global turbulence. To this end, the study will focus on cases such as the Large Investment Incentive Regime (RIGI) in Argentina and that of Venezuela.
  
  
• Class 14: Right-wing politics, law and politics
  Teacher: Adrian Piva
  
  Within the framework of this class, the proposal is to problematize how the territorial reconfigurations of capital production and circulation, in the current scenario of global crisis and restructuring, constitute the context for new strategies of political domination. The global crisis of neoliberalism since 2008 disrupted the conditions of accumulation and domination on a global scale. First, following the 2008–2009 recession, a phase of weak growth and pressures for productive restructuring ensued, fueling capital's offensives against labor in various territories. Second, the crisis of neoliberal political domination provided fertile ground for the emergence and expansion of tendentially authoritarian responses, giving rise to debates about their nature: authoritarian neoliberalism, neo-fascism, new and extreme right-wing movements, etc. Third, the neoliberal crisis was simultaneously the crisis of the imperialist system that arose in the context of the internationalization of capital and following the collapse of existing socialist regimes. This led to geopolitical tensions, a tendency toward war, and new forms of interventionism. Within this framework, we will analyze the territorial manifestations of the “new Monroe Doctrine,” its potential connections to free trade and extractivism, the formation of alliances and conflicts, and its impact on social struggles.
  
  
• Class 15: Beyond extractivism and free trade
  Teacher: Fiorella Ricagno
  
  As a concluding proposal, this class allows us to address the notion of transitions, particularly the energy transition, not as an overcoming of extractivism, but as a reformulation of it. Within the framework of green capitalism, we delve into the new form that dispossession takes in the wake of the climate crisis and the corporate energy transition, with the State acting as the vital guarantor through subsidies and regulatory frameworks that reinforce extraordinary rights for capital. Based on this diagnosis, we facilitate a debate aimed at outlining possible trends toward building environmentally sustainable and just popular forms of production and exchange. We will examine some concrete cases that offer a glimpse into some of the practices already developed.

You must be registered in the CLACSO Single Registration System (SUIC) and enter your username and password. If you are not registered, click here. hereTo access the registration form, you must click the "Register" button on the webpage of the Diploma you are interested in.

Upon completion of the registration process, you will receive a confirmation in your email.

Classes will begin in August and will conclude in December 2026.

All registered participants will receive, on the first day of activities, the necessary instructions to access the classes, bibliography, and discussion forums through the CLACSO Virtual Training Space.

Accessing and navigating the Virtual Learning Environment is very simple and user-friendly. In any case, a technical and academic support team will always be available. For inquiries, you can write to [email protected] 

 You must write an email with the request to [email protected] We will send you the requested certificate as soon as possible.

Exceptional criteria: In exceptional cases and within the first 20 days of starting the Higher Diploma, the student may write to [email protected] Requesting withdrawal and stating the reasons. After the case is evaluated, a response will be sent to the request. If approved, the student may resume the Higher Diploma program if a new cohort is offered the following year. After that period of time has elapsed since the start of the course, no requests will be accepted.

Money paid will only be refunded in cases where the organizing institutions decide to cancel the activity. 

Yes, the advanced diploma is certified by CLACSO. The diploma will be sent digitally and is completely free of charge.

Payment can be made in one installment, by credit card or bank transfer. We also offer the option of paying in 3 installments.

Yes. There will be discounts for students belonging to CLACSO Member Centers and CLACSO Associated Centers, for CLACSO Associate Researchers, and for all those who pay within the discount period.

You can check if you belong to a member center here: 

https://www.clacso.org/institucional/centros-asociados/

The Advanced Diploma program integrates a dynamic of asynchronous and synchronous classes. Classes are primarily asynchronous. The schedule for synchronous sessions will be communicated by the Diploma coordinator at the beginning of the program, and participation in these sessions is not a prerequisite for passing the program.