That which Doesn’t Break Us: Identity Work in the Face of Unwanted Development

Studies on identity work have focused primarily on internal organizational relations, and have yet to examine if, and how, identity work occurs amongst stakeholder groups. Our paper addresses this gap in the literature through an ethnographic study of one Indigenous group – the Machiguenga, a remote Indigenous tribe affected by the Camisea Gas Project in the Peruvian Amazon. We also introduce concepts such as ‘glocalization’ from anthropological studies of Indigenous identity processes and integrate these with organizational knowledge of ‘identity work.’ Our findings demonstrate that Indigenous cultural identity can be both threatened and strengthened in response to natural gas development and is related to how individuals, communities and the Machiguenga (as a collective) engage in identity work.