This research will conduct an analysis of indigenous struggles in Latin America and their evolving positionalities with regards to the state, in the context of neo-extractivist development (a development strategy focused on natural resource extraction with the state working in tandem with private capital). Specifically this project will undertake a comparison between indigenous movements in Mexico (the country in Latin America with the highest number of indigenous inhabitants) and Bolivia (the country in Latin America with the highest proportion of indigenous inhabitants as a percentage of the total population). Indigenous subjectivities have often been regarded as an anachronism in Latin America that would be absorbed through the twin processes of mestization (racial assimilation) and/or proletarianisation (conversion into wage workers). Yet indigenous movements are now the leading social force of popular mobilisation in the region. The demands articulated by indigenous groups raise important questions with regards to issues such as how multi-culturalism is conceived, pluri-ethnic conceptions of nationhood practiced and post-liberal citizenship enacted, concerns relevant in and beyond the region. The proposed research will explore processes of political class formation linked to place-based indigenous social movements, locating them within the wider dynamics uneven development in and beyond Latin America. I seek to investigate this within an inter-disciplinary approach of historical-geographical sociology (Hesketh 2017; Hesketh and Morton 2014), that also draws explicitly from Michael Burawoy’s (1998) extended case method to conduct a multi-scalar analysis, synthesizing both macro-level global structures with the everyday, micro-situations of lived experience. It fulfils the goals of the ISRF by contributing to a new innovative theorization of indigenous struggles that draws upon diverse disciplinary perspectives that often talk past each other. It uses such interdisciplinary expertise to address a real world problem of social exclusion and violent displacement currently taking place in the name of development.