Structural constraints in times of resource nationalism: oil policy and state capacity in post-neoliberal Ecuador

ABSTRACT

This article explores the re-emergence of resource nationalism in Ecuador during Rafael Correa’s government. In 2010, Ecuador pursued a shift in oil contracts from production sharing agreements to service contracts. I argue that resource nationalist policies were intended to maximize rent appropriation and increase state control. Nevertheless, in order to spell out the complexities of natural resource governance in post-neoliberal Ecuador, it is important to integrate the structural constraints of the Ecuadorian state to enact resource nationalist policies. Despite the nationalist sentiments that originated these reforms, the renegotiation of contracts continued to benefit foreign corporations due to the centralized attitude of the Correa government and the perennial limitations of state capacity in the regulation of the industry.     

Uses and abuses of culture: mestizaje in the era of multiculturalism

ABSTRACT

In this article, I analyse how intercultural ideas, practices and policies inform Mexico’s current racial formation, and how racial categories and meanings are shaped under neoliberalism and the politics of recognition. I argue that the uncritical use of cultural and ethnic differences as the central focus of interculturalism reifies and reproduces the preoccupation with culture and ethnic differences characteristic of the racial project of mestizaje that held sway for most of the twentieth century. This focus on difference has silenced a much-needed discussion about how neither interculturalism nor multiculturalism has changed existing racial hierarchies and privileges nor curtailed the effects of racism and racial injustice on indigenous people and their communities.     

Neoliberal discourses and ethnonormative regime in post-recognition Peru: redefining hierarchies and identities

ABSTRACT

This article analyses the impact of ‘recognition’ of cultural and ethnic diversity in Peru. It proposes that the rise of a new global ‘ethnonormativity’ – a regime to define and administrate cultural and identity differences, to establish boundaries between those who ‘are’ ethnic and those who are not, and to set rights and duties derived from identities – has had meagre effects in Peru. While the past decades have witnessed the emergence of Latin American political actors who regard indigenousness as their basic political identity, there has been no ‘emergence of indigenous movements’ in Peru. The discourses that highlight the importance of diversity have gained terrain – unsettling, to a certain extent, the narratives of assimilation through ‘development’ and mestizaje – and the Peruvian state has officially embraced ‘recognition’, including it in its official rhetoric and creating institutions to design policies to guarantee the rights of the indigenous and Afroperuvian ‘peoples’ (itself a label part of the language of multiculturalism). The state has also crafted a definition of ‘indigenous peoples’ and introduced ethnic variables in censuses and official statistics, thus being active in the production and regulation of subjects. Some civil society actors have also incorporated ethnic labels into their rhetoric to adapt to the global turn to identity politics. Peru remains, however, a fertile terrain for neoliberal policies and discourses of a different kind. A discourse that exalts ‘emprendedurismo’ (entrepreneurship) and states that success depends entirely on personal effort has become a new common sense, obscuring the structural inequality that has historically affected indigenous and Afroperuvian people. Extractivism continues to damage the environment and the rights of indigenous people, while the expansion of agribusiness in the coastal valleys of Peru keeps people – regardless of their ‘ethnic’ self-identification – in poverty and without basic labour and social rights. The article suggests that the ambiguities of the ethnonormative regime in Peru may serve as a diversion from structural issues in a context of neoliberalism and may re-elaborate racial hierarchies, racism and the narratives of mestizaje it allegedly opposes.     

Why the principle of informed self-determination does not help local farmers facing land loss: a case study from oil palm development in East Kalimantan,Indonesia

ABSTRACT

The principle of informed self-determination has been celebrated as a means to prevent involuntary land transfer and the resulting dispossession of affected communities in agricultural investments of developing countries. Based on qualitative field research conducted in East Kalimantan, Indonesia, this paper argues that such optimistic recognition needs reexamination. Drawing on a case study of indigenous Dayak communities that have faced advancement of large-scale oil palm estates since 2007, the paper examines what informs communities’ decisions to release land to estates. The underdevelopment created by government neglect and the lack of future prospects for autonomous development are shown to have contributed to communities’ decisions to release land. After a decade, encroaching palm oil has produced land shortages and depleted forest resources. This study highlights the need for meaningful state interventions to alleviate poverty and create conditions that allows local communities to make meaningful choices during the consultations over land release.     

Gendered Violence and Politics in Indigenous Communities

This article examines the depoliticization of violence against women in indigenous communities. It argues that there is a pressing need to examine the ways in which gendered violence is explained, addressed and often sanctioned in indigenous communities. The article draws on Crenshaw's concept of political intersectionality and examines responses to gendered violence in indigenous communities through two groups: Aboriginal women in Canada and Sámi women in Scandinavia.     

Toward a Decolonial Alternative to Development? The Emergence and Shortcomings of Vivir Bien as State Policy in Bolivia in the Era of Globalization

There is an urgent demand for the examination of the critical perceptions of new kinds of ‘development’ which are emerging in the Global South in response to—and often opposed to—the global capitalist political economy. This article discusses the case of contemporary Bolivia in which indigenous political alternatives have emerged as the resistance to economic globalization and the powers of capital accumulation, as well as to the cultural and epistemological commitments of the Western order. Through an ethnographic approach, it examines the emergence and shortcomings of the notion of vivir bien—a local, decolonial, indigenous concept of good life—as state policy. It argues that despite its transformative potential, the translation of vivir bien discourses into state practices has not been, to a large degree, achieved.     

Adat in Indonesian Land Law: A Promise for the Future or a Dead End?

At present the contestation of the Indonesian state’s dispossessory policies regarding land and other natural resources is dominated by a discourse based on adat. This situation is reminiscent of the colonial period, when invoking adat was a relatively effective means of protecting Indonesians from losing their land to plantation companies supported by the Netherlands–Indies government. However, adat lost its traction when Indonesia became independent and the new state started to vigorously pursue nation building and economic expansion. Only after the end of the New Order in 1998 did civil society groups revive the adat defence against dispossession. This article analyses current debates and developments concerning the place of adat in national land law and its potential for protecting communities against dispossession of their land by the Indonesian state. We argue that the promotion of adat has produced few concrete results and that it is unlikely to be more successful for this purpose in the future. Given Indonesia’s current social and political realities, any land rights strategy for protecting people against dispossession that is based on indigeneity is problematic, and alternative approaches are needed.     

‘National Machineries’ and Authoritarian Politics

Abstract

Why do authoritarian states adopt ‘state feminist’ policies, and what are the effects of these initiatives? This article expands our understanding of state feminist institutions in non-democracies by examining the development of a women's national machinery in Cameroon. It argues that the Cameroonian state has adopted a national machinery because: (1) it provides low-cost international legitimacy; (2) it attracts international assistance; (3) this assistance fuels domestic patronage networks; and (4) the national machinery channels women's activism toward state-delineated projects and goals. These motives undercut its ability to promote women's advancement. National machineries in authoritarian contexts are not just plagued by technical problems and funding shortages but also by competing agendas within the state apparatus and a lack of a commitment by high-level government officials to improving women's status in society.     

Some reflections on contemporary writing in the indigenous languages of America

Abstract

This article surveys recent literatures in the indigenous languages of Latin America. The past decade has witnessed a continent-wide rise in indigenous-language publications – a rise calling for a reevaluation of the critical state of indigenous rights and language policies that was expressed in the context of protests around the quincentennial celebrations of Columbus' 'discovery' of the Americas. The new wave of indigenous literatures has arisen in the wake of dramatic acts of violence, such as military repression and neoliberal economic restructuring. However, the large-scale displacement of indigenous peoples that has resulted from these processes has also provoked a desire among indigenous writers to utilize print media in order to preserve knowledge and communal memory. Drawing on specific examples from contemporary indigenous poetry of Peru and Mexico, the article argues that indigenous literature challenges conceptions of indigenous expressive culture as inherently oral, traditional, rural, and communitarian.     

Redefining antiracism: Learning from activists to sharpen academic language

People have fought against racism for as long as it has existed and yet it persists in diverse and materially impactful ways. The primary challenge to eradicating racism is likely the power of white privilege. This paper argues that another important obstacle to progress has been the lack of a clear definition of antiracism that movement activists and scholars can collaboratively use to ensure that antiracist scholarship and efforts meet the full measure of the term's intention. While academia has struggled to converge on a definition, “lay race theorists” and movement activists—Black women in particular, have been participating in discourse online and through other venues where consensus appears to be developing around a definition. This article attempts to summarize activist discourse in defining antiracism as “the commitment to eradicate racism in all its forms” and individual antiracism as “the commitment to eradicate racism in all its forms, by (1) building an understanding of racism and (2) taking action to eliminate racism “within oneself, in other people, in institutions, and through actions outside of institutions,” noting that “antiracism is an ongoing practice and commitment that must be accountable to antiracist Black people, Indigenous people, and other People of Color and consider intersectional systems of oppression.” While research on the public conversation benefits from its easy access and limited additional burdens on movement activists, future research should test these definitions with movement activists to ensure that definitions and metrics are as relevant to the antiracist movement as possible.     

Eating heritage: caste,colonialism, and the contestation of adivasi creativity

ABSTRACT

This paper uses a multiple colonialisms approach to study cultural production in India and argue that coloniality is not a casteless structure of violence. In discursive and planning rhetoric, ‘creativity is in India’s DNA.’ This discourse incites the poor to harness and develop their tangible and intangible cultural heritage in order to feed themselves. Foregrounding anti-caste, Dalit scholarship in conversation with extant formulations of decolonial aesthetics focuses urgent attention on the fact that caste domination and violence structure inter-state political systems of development planning and post/colonial state discourses of heritage that claim to feed the caste-oppressed poor with their own creativity. This article attends to the political histories and critiques of Indigenous Chhara performance artists because their expressive cultures foreground anti-caste struggles against simultaneous state erasure and capture of Indigenous creativity. Against planning’s compensatory solution of eating heritage, anti-caste scholarship and the creative politics of Budhan Theatre refute the apparent castelessness of what counts as creativity and heritage, demonstrating that optimistic global creative economy discourses actually rely upon caste and colonial histories to entrench caste-based definitions of heritage within international and national development regimes. Budhan Theatre’s decolonizing cultural production avoids the mistakes of postcolonial scholarship and its erasure of caste histories. They prompt a multiple colonialisms approach which refuses labels of postcolonial or settler colonial states to privilege instead attention to the actually existing contemporary ways in which caste violence structures inter-state systems of violence, policies, and discourses.     

Morality and Patriarchal White Sovereignty

This article offers a reading of three separate stories of gang rapes that have been prominent in the Australian media since 2000. The men involved – an Indigenous leader, young Sydney men identified as Muslim and several ostensibly un-raced professional footballers, have been positioned through different legal outcomes, media representations and through a prominently deployed discourse of morality. The article locates the gang rape stories in mutual inter-relationship with the expression of racism in Australia and the performance of ‘patriarchal white sovereignty’ by the Australian state in the 2000s in the global climate since 11 September 2001. It argues that the politics of race and whiteness, and the protocols for their speaking, have been central in the telling of the rape stories. These stories of gang rape have also created differently racialized positions for women including some remarkably respectful mainstream representations of the women raped by non-white men. The article concludes that these stories perform a gendered and raced moral justification for the racist and colonialist policies of the Australian state, both within national borders and beyond, that characterized the national government led by Prime Minister John Howard (1996–2007).     

‘Befriend them but not be their friend’: Negotiations of youth practice in a digital age

ABSTRACT

‘You’ve gotta befriend them but not be their friend’ is how one youth worker thoughtfully described the secret to successful youth practice. This paper draws on experiences of youth workers in the United Kingdom to consider how the growth of digital technologies comes to be negotiated and articulated in professional practice. Situating these experiences alongside young people’s accounts, this article highlights a distinction between young people’s relationship with the digital and adult perceptions of youth and technology. The aim of this paper is to consider what factors contribute towards this divide and where adult perceptions come from, if not from the experiences of young people themselves. The article then goes on to discuss the potential consequences of the presence of technology and discourses surrounding the digital for youth worker’s engagements with young people in professional practice. Overall, this article argues for the enduring relevance of youth workers and physical youth centres in a digital age and joins several scholars in critiquing the chronic under-investment in youth workers and provision in the UK and beyond.     

Talks and disputes of racism in Colombia after multiculturalism*

ABSTRACT

This article examines the terms that shape the notion of ethnic group for black communities. This notion allows one to understand the singularity of Colombia’s turn to multiculturalism in the 1990s, and how it has impacted the political and theoretical imaginations of cultural otherness. I will argue that this shift to multiculturalism has not meant the disappearance of the talks and disputes of racism and the beginning of a kind of ‘post-racial’ social formation. On the contrary, old and new forms of talk and disputes of racism could be traced after this shift to multiculturalism, not only in relation to the dense legislation for the recognition of black communities as ethnic groups, but also in regard to other realms such as social media, activist struggles and academic paradigms.     

The Role of Indigeneity NGOs in the Legal Recognition of Adat Communities and Customary Forests in Indonesia

The main assumption of indigeneity NGOs in Indonesia is that state recognition will strengthen indigenous peoples’ rights to their land and forests against ongoing or future dispossession. In Indonesia, legal recognition has become central to the approaches of indigeneity NGO campaigns, while the local realities and problems among indigenous communities seem to receive less attention. Has legal recognition of indigenous communities turned into a national NGO project that does not solve the communities’ land and forest-related problems? In this article, we compare two locations where communities have succeeded in obtaining state recognition. By focusing our analysis on the steps in the recognition process, from articulating community problems to eventually solving them, we show how indigeneity NGOs have had a dominant role, but achieved limited success. Instead of resulting in community autonomy and tenure security, the legal recognition process reproduces state territorialisation over customary forests and communities.     

Translating Inclusion into Influence in New Zealand: The Conundrum of Engaging Gender Organizations in Public Policy

ABSTRACT

Women’s and gender organizations in New Zealand, like the rest of the community sector, capitalized on opportunities to engage with government as part of an inclusive turn in policymaking in the last decade. For the local women’s movement, inclusion offered the promise of strategic policy involvement at a time when the women’s movement was in “abeyance.” While governmental rhetoric emphasizes trusting and open relationships, the reality of engagement for organizations is complex, and the lasting influence they have on policy processes and outcomes is questionable. This article, based on the qualitative empirical analyses of interviews with over 30 representatives of community organizations, activists, scholars, and policymakers, identifies the opportunity structures of influence in the inclusive policy relationship. Emergent themes from the interviews showed that influence was tied to three key characteristics: fiscal autonomy, organizational legitimacy, and discursive alignment with the state’s discourses. Overall, the analysis points to new opportunities of influence created by the inclusive agenda, yet they are strained by the need to maintain ongoing collaborative relationships between the women’s sector and the state.     

Transforming academic work: Communities of practice in Australian universities

Abstract

This article explores the model of communities of practice as an alternative to the competitive, corporatised model of universities prescribed in current Australian federal government policies and described in the document Universities: Backing Australia's Future (2003) and associated papers. The article argues that the federal government's policies, which include the proposal to create niche Australian universities, with specific purposes such as teaching-only, will reduce intra-institutional plurality and interdisciplinary activities. This represents a significant shift for most Australian tertiary institutions which have, over the past two decades, invested significant resources addressing disparate agendas of an increasing range of stakeholders. The current policies, with their emphasis on individualism and competition, have been criticised as demonstrating a poor understanding of academic work (Murray and Dollery 2005). The authors concur with this criticism and suggest that intra-institutional plurality, which may be reduced by the proposed changes, is more conducive to creative academic work. We argue that a government-regulated environment will limit the opportunity for collaborative and scholarly ways of doing academic work, such as the natural formation of communities of practice (Lave and Wenger 1991). The article suggests that the communities of practice model can offer a transformative approach to the organisation of academic work, by recognising and building on diversity, promoting collaboration and encouraging interdisciplinary research.     

Re-Uniting African American Scholars,Practitioners and the Community

ABSTRACT

That African American communities are too often desolate places where it seems, in Hurston's words, “life has been and gone,” argues for increasingly creative community development strategies. This paper presents an historically-based, corporate empowerment model designed to address the desolation, by re-uniting scholars, practitioners and other community stakeholders for collective benefit and empowerment. Through an African-centered evaluative discussion, the authors assume the professional risk of sharing an outcome that may be viewed as a failure. The efficacy of the model, juxtaposed against the continued powerlessness of African American scholars, practitioners and communities, is explored. Practice challenges and implications are discussed.     

A new paradigm: Bringing a historical and sociopolitical trauma lens to the training for welfare practitioners working with Aboriginal families

This article argues that child protection agencies must provide mandatory training about the Aboriginal experience within the welfare state and the resultant trauma that exists in Australian Indigenous communities. This article highlights the areas of curriculum to be included in training for welfare practitioners working with Aboriginal families in the New South Wales child protection system. The training content explores the Stolen Generations’ trauma experiences of child loss and examines the dichotomy between past child welfare laws and present child protection laws and intergenerational racism. Another key component of the training comprises information about the impacts of trauma on brain development.     

Donald Trump's discursive field: A juncture of stigma contests over race,gender, religion,and democracy

Donald Trump's election to the U.S. Presidency in 2016 qualifies as one of the more shocking events in American political history. This article reviews the literature on the social construction of Donald Trump's political career. It finds prominent ideological laminations over racism, Islamophobia, nativism, sexism, Christianity, and right‐wing populism in Trump's discursive field. This article argues that Trump's discursive field comprises a juncture of stigma contests over the moral worth of numerous collective identities including men, women, racial minorities, immigrants, Muslims, Christians, and the middle class. Such stigma contests likely exacerbate recognition gaps created by neoliberal policies. This review suggests that scholars should continue to examine the connection between Trump's political career and stigmatization. Moreover, cultural sociologists should ready themselves to track the dialectical response to Trump and to assess the lasting impact on the American normative order.