Journals at the University of Arizona
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From water abundance to water scarcity: the case of the Chontalpa, Mexico
No full textThis article uses original ethnographic data to show how a development program known as Plan Chontalpa failed to extend potable water provision to rural people in Chontalpa, in Tabasco, Mexico. Despite arguably short-term benefits, this large state-led, large-scale hydrodevelopment program created overly large infrastructures and imposed a hierarchical water management regime on previously open-access water resources, negatively impacting the communities it purported to serve. This article demonstrates how, in lieu of the vulnerabilities created by the Plan, residents have resiliently devised their own water management system that combines customary techniques, such as harvesting rainwater, with formal and informal ones. In conclusion, this article insists that water management resilient practices at the household level can teach us alternative ways of decision-making that can transform local development efforts. Keywords: resilience, political ecology, water harvesting technique, household management, hydrodevelopmen
Governing the ungovernable: contesting and reworking REDD+ in Indonesia
No full textReducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation plus the role of conservation, sustainable forest management, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries (REDD+) has rapidly become a dominant approach in mitigating climate change. Building on the Foucauldian governmentality literature and drawing on a case study of Ulu Masen Project in Aceh, Indonesia, this article examines the practices of subject making through which REDD+ seeks to enroll local actors, a research area that remains relatively underexplored. It interrogates the ways in which local actors react, resist or maneuver within these efforts, as they negotiate multiple subject positions. Interviews and focus group discussions combined with an analysis of documents show that the subject making processes proceed at a complex conjuncture constituted and shaped by political, economic and ecological conditions within the context of Aceh. The findings also suggest that the agency of communities in engaging, negotiating and even contesting the REDD+ initiative is closely linked to the history of their prior engagement in conservation and development initiatives. Communities are empowered by their participation in REDD+, although not always in the ways expected by project implementers and conservation and development actors. Furthermore, communities' political agency cannot be understood by simply examining their resistance toward the initiative; these communities have also been skillful in playing multiple roles and negotiating different subjectivities depending on the situations they encounter.Keywords: REDD+, subject-making, agency, resistance, Indonesia, Ace
Two ontologies of territory and a legal claim in the Ecuadorian Upper Amazon
No full textThe Secoya nation (Siekopai) of the Ecuadorian Upper Amazon, in its request for recognition of indigenous territories in a protected area, has appeared before the Republic of Ecuador's conservation regime with arguments based on an administrative and physical concept of territory. The Secoya worldview and culture, however, supposes an ontology of territory in which the geographic space, updated rituals, and their relationship with nature converge. In this article we analyze this important ontological difference in detail. We compare the territorial subjectivation processes produced by both ontologies: a Cartesian conceptual framework in the case of the State's political geography, and the Secoya's phenomenological ecology. Since the Secoya include a management plan for the protected area in their petition, it would seem they have internalized the State's rule regarding the principle of sustainability within conservation. We argue that sustainability is incompatible with the presence of a phenomenological ecology that makes them political subjects, and therefore it is a strategic inclusion that does not respond to their socio-ecological reality.Keywords: Ecuadorian Amazon, legal request, territory, Amerindian graphism, subjectivation, ontolog
LYMPHATIC SYSTEM MALFORMATIONS IN NOONAN SYNDROME: TWO CASE REPORTS AND IMAGING ANALYSIS
No full textLymphedema is a well-known complication of Noonan syndrome (NS) but the lymphatic malformations in NS are poorly understood. We report clinical, genetic, and imaging information about a boy and girl with NS and late-onset lower extremity lymphedema. A de novo mission mutation of RIT1 (NM_006912.5) c.246TA, p.Phe82Leu was identified in the girl, who also showed systemic lymphatic hyperplasia and dysfunction. Magnetic resonance lymphangio-graphy (MRL) of the boy clearly demonstrated segmental dilated and hyperplastic lymphatics with impaired transport function in an affected limb and pelvic region. Indocyanine green lymphography (ICGL) showed delayed and partial enhancement of the lymph vessels in the affected limb but no lymph reflux was detected. No causative mutation was identified in the second case. Lymphoscintigraphy (LSG) failed to show lymph vessels in either of the children. Our study showed that MRL is a reliable and accurate test that can be used to demonstrate morpho-logical and functional defects of the lymphatic system. Moreover, ICGL is sufficiently sensitive to determine the functional condition of peripheral lymph vessels. The combined use of imaging modalities can give an accurate diagnosis of complex lymphatic system anomalies in NS and other syndromic diseases.
EDITORIAL
No full textEVOLUTION OF THE 2020 INTERNATIONAL SOCIETYOF LYMPHOLOGY CONSENSUS DOCUMENT PARALLELSADVANCES IN LYMPHOLOGY: AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIV
CONSENSUS DOCUMENT
No full textTHE DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT OFPERIPHERAL LYMPHEDEMA: 2020 CONSENSUS DOCUMENTOF THE INTERNATIONAL SOCIETY OF LYMPHOLOG
In the shadows of power: the infrastructural violence of thermal power generation in Ghana's coastal commodity frontier
No full textThis research adopts Jason Moore's concept of the commodity frontier, which portrays the socio-ecological impacts of capitalist expansion, to analyze the spread of Independent Power Provision in Sub-Saharan Africa. This form of power provision has thus far been under-theorized, especially its impacts on local communities, which must be addressed considering its contemporary popularity in the region. The article uses the concept of 'infrastructural violence' as an analytical lens, drawing upon its language and theories that describe the ways in which physical infrastructures often deemed benign can inflict violence on specific regions and social groups. Using a case study of the Takoradi Thermal Power Station in the Western Region of Ghana, the ethnographic research depicts the subtle yet highly deleterious forms of violence that occur within Aboadze, the small-scale fishing community the power station is embedded in, reducing access to vital resources including food, water and land, as well as the various exclusions that impact the livelihoods of a community already suffering from marginalization and poverty.Keywords: Commodity frontiers, infrastructural violence, power station, Sub-Saharan Africa, Ghan
Seeing like the people: a history of territory and resistance in the southern Ecuadorian Amazon
No full textThe Cordillera del Condor in the Ecuadorian Amazon has been analyzed frequently in the literature of extractivism in Latin America, due to the current mining pressure on this territory. Mining is, however, the most recent in a long history of territorial transformations in the region. The production of territory in the Cordillera del Condor is the result of a complex historical accumulation of events, motivated by the political economy of the country that has transformed the people and its land. By studying the main events of state deterritorialization, this article examines multiple socio-spatial relations that occurred in the Cordillera del Condor. This article identifies three main events of state deterritorialization: (1) colonization and evangelization, (2) the Ecuador-Peru war and (3) large-scale mining. The analysis illustrates how territory is constantly integrated into the economic and political rationality of the nation-state and discusses these transformations in line with the institutionalization of new forms of organization, legibility, commodification of nature and subjectification of people. In contrast, the study also illustrates how people inhabiting this space counteract state deterritorialization by deploying the same strategies as the state; reinforcing reterritorialization in their own terms. The article concludes by highlighting the agency of people to reshape state mechanisms in the struggle of defining a territory.Keywords: state deterritorialization, reterritorialization, political ecology, Cordillera del Condor, Ecuado
