University of Warwick Press: Journals
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Virgin Forests. The Long Human Past of the Tapajos Valley
Get PDFThis article looks at the archaeological heritage along the rapids of the Tapajós River and its tributaries, such as the Juruena and Teles Pires Rivers, based on the existing record. Apart from archaeology, historical sources as well as oral history may also shed some light on the (often turbulent) past of the Tapajós Valley after the Portuguese conquest (Menéndez, 1981/1982, 2006 [1992]). They also point at the possible location of archaeological sites; stemming from the review of historical and archaeological sources, Alexandre Robazzini (2013) has compiled a comprehensive table containing 423 archaeological sites in the Tapajós Valley. Notwithstanding the limited amount of archaeological fieldwork carried out in the region where the government intends to build the Tapajós Hydroelectric Complex (CHT) –and in contrast to the idea promoted by the official discourse that the area in question is empty and has no history- we present some evidence here that points to the richness and singularity of the existing archaeological heritage. Far from being located in a virgin forest, the Tapajós and its tributaries irrigate an area that has been anthropized, or in other words, altered by humans for thousands of years
The case of MINKA movement in Bolivia and its aim to re-politicize indigenous peoples
Get PDFSince the dawn of the 21st century, indigenous identities and knowledge stand at the center of a scenario where new levers for social change are desperately sought for. In that scenario, indigenous knowledge and practices are taking on an increasingly important role in economic and social progress (Briggs 2005; Cleaver 1999). However, several authors argue that indigenous experiences and understandings have been idealized, leading to a process of de-politicization (Briggs 2005; Cleaver 1999; Zimmerer 2014). Their criticism is not based on the effectiveness of indigenous knowledge, but on its instrumentalization in order to support actions demanding social change (Cleaver 1999). These arguments made by Briggs, Cleaver and Zimmerer inevitably raise questions about the ways in which politics (and academia) produce knowledge about indigenous people and practices that reproduce de-contextualized representations
Housing Movements and Participation in Institutional Spaces
Get PDFThis article sets out to examine the inclusion of social movements in the designing of public policy in Brazil. I situate the Brazilian political and social context in terms of its persistent social inequalities and the inclusion of social movements in policy-making during the course of 2003–2010 (Lula da Silva’s first and second terms as president) and 2011–2014 (Dilma Rousseff’s first term as president). I discuss and explore mechanisms of participatory democracy, and more specifically, I look at the process of integration of civil society in spaces of decision-making related to housing issues. This paper found that, despite some concrete results of implementing greater popular participation, the inclusion of social movements still faces challenges to be effectively included in spaces of decision-making, especially under the current conservative administration
Diálogos de (re)existencia Indígena Afro-Latinxs: Descolonialidades posibles
Get PDFEste artículo es el resultado del diálogo generado en el simposio “Descolonizando el Norte Global: Afro-Latinoamérica, el Caribe y Abya Yala en diáspora” durante el Congreso Internacional de Americanistas (56º ICA 2018). Escrito en el formato de una conversación hecha a ocho manos, este texto tiene como objetivo exponer las condiciones de opresión vivenciadas por pueblos indígenas y afro-latinos desde dos posicionalidades: La primera de ellas es la voz de lxs investigadorxs inmersxs en las realidades contextuales dadas, seguidas por los comentarios de lxs investigadorxs abordando temas relacionados al racismo institucional, a la explotación y uso de la tierra y a la construcción de identidades y espacios queer desde una perspectiva descolonial. El esfuerzo de este diálogo es apuntar hacia horizontes posibles de liberación a partir de intercambios que puedan construir redes de solidaridad
Spatiality, Temporality and Ontology: Constraints for the Restitution of Indigenous Peoples’ Territorial Rights in Colombia
Get PDFIn this article, three limitations to how ethnic land restitution has been carried out in Colombia to date are discussed. The specific restrictions that I mention are related to 1) temporality, 2) spatiality, and 3) to the ontology of the idea of reparations concerning indigenous peoples’ territorial rights. These findings result from fieldwork conducted in 2017 and 2018 in the Aponte indigenous reserve of the Inga people. The first section of the article briefly describes the history and functioning of Act 1448 of 2011, known in Colombia as the Law on Victims and Land Restitution. In the second section, I describe the case of the Inga people in Aponte, located in the department of Nariño, in southern Colombia. In the third section, I discuss the three limitations mentioned above regarding the land restitution process, followed by a conclusion
Speak out or stay silent? A study of oil company-community relations through the political ecology of voice
Get PDF“[T]o try to lift the pipeline, we had to immerse in that water without any protection … under the instruction of engineers, they told us that we had to try to reach it, so we did immerse there without any clothing, only underwear and it was full of crude oil, it was thick” (A Cuninico indigenous resident in the Peruvian Amazon describes their 2014 oil spill remediation work
Latin America, new ruralities, old and new collective action
Get PDFECLAC characterises the six-year period from 1998 to 2003 as the “lost six-years” for the region. In this sense, they refer to the poor performance of the main economic variables and recall what was known at the end of the 1980s as the “lost decade”. The neoliberal discourse argued that, after the structural reforms put in place during the 1980s and 1990s, economies would grow and popular sectors would receive the spilling-over effects of that growth (the famous trickling down). It did not go like that: the growth rate of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the region shows a consistent decline since 1998, which reaches a critical point in 2002 due to the repercussions of the Argentine crisis. But this country was not the only one that showed the consequences of the “market policies” imposed by multilateral organisations and accepted by the local political leadership; Uruguay, Venezuela, Haiti and several countries in the Caribbean show negative annual rates of GDP growth and those that grow do so to very small degrees (ECLAC, 2003)
Digital farming, invisible farmers: Global mergers and smallholders in Latin America
No full textDigital technologies have been gradually penetrating agricultural production systems; specially, in the last two decades, generating both expectations and concerns because of the unknown technological scope and the speed of the transformations. While some sectors are enthusiastic on the potential of digital tools have to contribute efficiently in food production, to achieve agri-food sustainability and to mitigate climate change, others are concerned about the challenges digital technologic will produce on political, social and cultural fields. The embeddedness, conditions, and usage of digital technologies in the agriculture sector raise questions on how and who participates on Global Production Networks and shape governance structures and policies orientation underpinning them. In the current landscape, just some few Global Networks with different forms of economic and political power are dominating digitalisation worldwide. They have the control of technologies to implement digital agriculture at the global scale. Governmental institutions both at international and national level foster financial and market policies to invest and promote in digitalisation what has impacts on the shifting of food systems. This article examines the dynamics of power concentration wielded by the Global Networks that, through large transnational corporations, have managed to dominate different sectors of the food chain by implementing digital systems for agriculture. It also presents an analysis of land concentration and big data and the possible implications for small producers and traditional food systems in Latin America. It suggests that while some digital services can contribute to improving and alleviating the challenges facing agricultural production, others could increase the concentration of power in a few hands by appropriating sensitive information from Big Data and adapting it to industrial food production and food value chains and posing fundamental challenges to governance structures
Book Review: Sheller, Mimi (2020) Island Futures: Caribbean Survival in the Anthropocene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, pp. 226. ISBN:9781478010128
No full textWhat alternatives to disaster recovery can we think of? What are the dynamics behind the ‘just recoveries’ of disasters? In ‘Island Futures’, Mimi Sheller invites us to envisage alternatives to development, disaster recovery and disaster capitalism in the Caribbean region. Thinking the Caribbean mainly from the Haitian experience, Sheller reflects on the workings of uneven post-disaster recovery in an era where the human-made ecological crisis has become more evident. In sum, she invites us to reflect on the implications of an “ever-worsening climate change driven by neoliberal capitalism” that will only produce more disasters and perpetuate underdevelopment if nothing is done to reverse the current trajectory
"omg same": The role of empathy and near-peer teaching in PGR teaching in the COVID era
Get PDFLiterature on education at all levels, from early-years to postgraduate, highlights the role of positive relationships in effective teaching. My experience of teaching undergraduates as a PGR has stressed this emphatically, especially since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The impacts of what many students know as “the Rona” are twofold: not only has undergraduate mental health suffered through the uncertainty and isolation of the recent years (e.g. Appleby et al., 2022; Catling et al., 2022), but the already-overwhelming workload of the academic staff primarily responsible for the education and welfare of students swelled during the transition to online teaching. Overcommitting staff even further results in reduced scope for relationship-building with students, in terms of both time availability and emotional capacity. PGR teachers, by comparison, have more flexibility and freedom to connect with undergraduates directly and in smaller groups, and the role of building relationships to support learning can fall to them.
In this reflective account, I consider how my role as a tutor of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths (STEM) subjects for interdisciplinary undergraduate students allowed me to create an encouraging space for them to build relationships with me and each other. I found that near-peer teaching and the mutual trauma of studenthood in the pandemic created a strong connection where I was able to hear the students’ worries and concerns, not simply about the calculus I taught but regarding their entire course structure, systemic biases affecting their experience of their degrees, and the approach of the university as a whole.