Structural Legacies Research Articles

The forest biodiversity artery: towards forest management for saproxylic conservation

Abstract: One of the objectives of forest conservation is the set aside of unharvested areas. However, the fragmentation and lack of connectivity of protected areas make the integration of conservation measures in productive forests essential. Strategies to integrate conservation of saproxylic biodiversity in forest management have been developed, but often considering only specific aspects or remaining preliminary otherwise. As the impact of climate change and anthropogenic stresses increases, the development and the synthesis of this approach is crucial. We reviewed the key literature on forest management for biodiversity conservation, integrating forest science perspective to provide a practical management framework. Our goal is to present a management framework that could contribute to the effective preservation of forest insect biodiversity at the landscape scale, without high economic efforts, and addressing the conflicts that still jeopardize sustainable forest management. The results of our review support the creation of micro-reserves inside productive forests, to support large reserves in landscape conservation strategies. Micro-reserves increase the resilience of forest ecosystems to anthropogenic disturbances, through the development of a heterogeneous structure, maximizing microhabitat availability. Modeling forest management and harvest on local natural disturbance would extend the benefits of spatio-temporal heterogeneity in productive forests. Variable retention harvest systems, applied at the landscape scale, are a feasible and adaptable strategy to preserve and increase biodiversity, safeguarding structural legacies such as senescent trees and deadwood inside the productive matrix. The operational shift, from the stand to the forest landscape, is fundamental to extend the benefits of conservation measures. The Forest Biodiversity Artery, composed by several micro-reserves or ilots de senescence, connected by corridors of habitat trees and deadwood, constitutes a network that would deliver old-growth forests attributes to the productive matrix. This planning instrument would support forest connectivity, and socioeconomic constraints.

Direct and Indirect Interactions between Landscape Structure and Invasive or Overabundant Species

We reviewed recent literature to evaluate interactions between landscape structure (i.e., composition and configuration of landscapes) and overabundant and/or invasive species or “undesirable” species. Undesirable species are strongly associated with fragmented landscapes, especially those with linearly arranged elements to facilitate dispersal, and with land uses that serve as population sources. In some cases, structural legacies, such as land use histories, were as important as current landscape patterns. Many undesirable species also influenced landscape structure by altering disturbance regimes via a wide range of abiotic and biotic mechanisms, including by affecting abundance of keystone, foundation or engineering species at landscape scales, and by changing species interactions in ways that prompted community-level changes. In some instances, the effects of species on landscapes facilitated invasion and/or population growth to establish positive feedback cycles. Understanding the reciprocal effects of landscape pattern on invasive and overabundant species can help guide effective management strategies by increasing the cost-efficiency of conservation investments and prioritizing conservation actions.

The Colonies in Concrete

While a number of scholars have sought to lift Walter Benjamin's urban writing out of its original European context and to appropriate it for studies of postcolonial cities and cultures, few have attempted to situate Benjamin's original analyses of urban consumer culture within the wider context of European colonialism in the nineteenth century. Yet Benjamin's montage of the Parisian capital in the Arcades Project captures a key moment in the integration of metropolitan consumer publics into new global markets, and, with its plethora of exotic commodities, imperial spectacles and world fairs, records popular imaginative constructions of the colonies as spaces of leisure, luxury and abundance. This essay suggests that, in linking these images to the abstract and mysterious properties of the commodity form, and in underscoring the forms of abstraction at work in the ‘dreamworlds’ of metropolitan consumer culture, Benjamin's work can be seen to expose a colonial politics of the visible at the heart of nineteenth-century metropolitan consciousness. His theoretical interventions, moreover, give shape to an alternative mode of reading the metropolis – one that brings traces of the uneven histories and structural legacies of colonial exchange into the field of vision.

The struggle for the state and the politics of belonging in contemporary Angola, 1975–2015

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Angola’s independence, this essay revisits key dimensions of the country’s postcolonial trajectory through the prism of the complex politics of the nationalist struggle and the first decades of self-rule. Its goal is to provide a series of reflections, mostly centred on the MPLA regime, rather than a comprehensive treatment of all political actors in Angolan politics of recent decades. It argues, firstly, that Angola’s trajectory from independence to the end of the country’s long civil war in 2002 was powerfully conditioned by the structural legacies of late colonialism, the associated intra-nationalist politics and the particular circumstances of the end of empire in 1975. To these legacies, the essay adds the (constrained, but real) choices made by Angolan decision-makers in terms of institutional consolidation, the management of the economy and state–society relations. Secondly, the essay outlines the extent to which the MPLA’s 2002 victory against UNITA in the country’s civil war did away with the fragmentation that had characterised Angolan politics since the 1960s. The clashing, indeed mutually exclusionary, nationalist projects that had jostled for control of the Angolan state were replaced by a would-be hegemonic political force with a strong sense of legitimacy and a self-defined project of postwar nation building. The key question for the contemporary study of Angola – and one that the oil-fuelled politics of the national reconstruction era provided plenty of reflection on – is the extent to which the MPLA’s postwar vision can supersede the country’s historical divisions and provide the population with both the material prosperity it yearns for and a shared understanding of belonging.

Disputing the Character of the City: Heritage, Regeneration and the Urban Design Turn

Like many cities with an abundant legacy of heritage structures and aspirations to expand their economic and population base, Halifax (Nova Scotia) experiences significant tensions between heritage conservation and urban development ambitions. On the one hand, Halifax has a vigorous heritage movement spawned in the wake of slum clearance and urban redevelopment efforts in the 1960s; heritage advocates work consistently to conserve the low-rise character of the historic city. On the other hand, it has an emergent urban design lobby supported by economic development interests and creative class ideas; development advocates call for signature high-rise buildings to attract investment and young people. With each new development proposal, community groups argue about the meaning of past and future, the nature of cultural identity and the image of the city. In this essay we examine the recent emergence of a social network of young urban professionals whose influence is growing rapidly in local debates about urban regeneration. Whereas a decade ago heritage conservation enjoyed high priority in planning debates in many parts of the world, today it competes with arguments for signature architecture and greater urban density. The urban design turn reflects changing cultural priorities but also reveals the operation of new governance mechanisms within local growth machines.

South Africa-the present as history: from Mrs Ples to Mandela & Marikana. By John S. Saul and Patrick Bond

South Africa—the present as history: from Mrs Ples to Mandela & Marikana. By John S. Saul and Patrick Bond. Woodbridge: James Currey. 2014. 302pp. Index. £40.00. ISBN 978 1 84701 092 6. Available as e-book. The initial democratic era under the presidency of the icon Nelson Mandela, between 1994 and the end of the century, allowed South Africa to score big in terms of international reputation. Inherited flaws in the structural legacy of the country and a reformist government reluctant to transform the economy were largely overlooked—if not even considered as positive realpolitik. Mandela's successor, the technocrat and foreign policy-maker Thabo Mbeki, personified more obviously the limits to emancipation than the charismatic Mandela. Mbeki's ousting from office and—after a short interim period—the takeover by his rival Jacob Zuma, was another step in the country's decline. As regional hegemon and junior member of the BRICS, South Africa increasingly faced challenges and problems both at the domestic front and in its role as a power with geostrategic influence on the continent. The 20 years of South African democracy therefore offer plenty of opportunity for reflection. This book takes a closer look at the domestic front and provides a brutally frank, if not devastating, verdict.

Seeking Barriers to the Development of Knowledge Transgressivity Potential (KTP): Lessons from a Postgraduate Student Survey at The University of Johannesburg

Institutional mergers coupled with the distinction between teaching-focused 'comprehensives' and traditional, research-intensive universities are evidence of differentiation in action within South African higher education. Comprehensive institutions such as the University of Johannesburg (UJ) are relatively underresearched. A UJ-based survey of postgraduate students (n=300) suggests the possibility of knowledge transgressi vity within and outside of UJ. However, the development of a transdisciplinary platform (to fa cilitate the evolu tion of knowledge transgressivity potential (KTP)) between natural and social science-focused postgraduates, is likely limited by perceptual class and race barriers, with the former proving most influential. Moreover, inter institutional KTP between UJ, as a comprehensive, and WITS, as a traditional university, is present, but limited by material class barriers, such as fees differentials. Nevertheless, findings suggest that KTP could be developed at the junior postgraduate level if class perceptions and structural legacies are to be overcome. Comprehensives l ike UJ are capable of more than solely fulfilling an undergraduate teaching function as such, they should enjoy more research attention. While all South African universities contribute to transformation and competitiveness in distinct ways, the rigid demarcation, and potentially inadvertent 'privileging' of some South African universities, should be avoided. This is critical as such demarcation cannot lead to long-term institutional integration and increased potential for true knowledge transgressivity.

Generational forgiveness and historical injustices: perspectives of descendants of victims of Apartheid-era gross human rights violations in South Africa

This study explored the issue of generational forgiveness in the political sphere in contemporary South Africa. It is based on qualitative interviews conducted with 20 children and grandchildren (females = 10, males = 10) of victims of Apartheidera gross human rights violations. The interview data were interpretively analysed to uncover underlying meaning. The results yielded three main themes namely: the myth of forgiveness in politics; political forgiveness as an inherently difficult human enterprise; and the intrinsic value of political forgiveness. Findings suggest that political forgiveness is likely if solutions are found to persistent poverty and inequality, which are structural legacies of the past.

Seeking Barriers to the Development of Knowledge Transgressivity Potential (KTP): Lessons from a Postgraduate Student Survey at The University of Johannesburg

Institutional mergers coupled with the distinction between teaching-focused 'comprehensives' and traditional, research-intensive universities are evidence of differentiation in action within South African higher education. Comprehensive institutions such as the University of Johannesburg (UJ) are relatively underresearched. A UJ-based survey of postgraduate students (n=300) suggests the possibility of knowledge transgressi vity within and outside of UJ. However, the development of a transdisciplinary platform (to fa cilitate the evolu tion of knowledge transgressivity potential (KTP)) between natural and social science-focused postgraduates, is likely limited by perceptual class and race barriers, with the former proving most influential. Moreover, inter institutional KTP between UJ, as a comprehensive, and WITS, as a traditional university, is present, but limited by material class barriers, such as fees differentials. Nevertheless, findings suggest that KTP could be developed at the junior postgraduate level if class perceptions and structural legacies are to be overcome. Comprehensives l ike UJ are capable of more than solely fulfilling an undergraduate teaching function as such, they should enjoy more research attention. While all South African universities contribute to transformation and competitiveness in distinct ways, the rigid demarcation, and potentially inadvertent 'privileging' of some South African universities, should be avoided. This is critical as such demarcation cannot lead to long-term institutional integration and increased potential for true knowledge transgressivity.

One nation under God? Yusuf al-Qaradawi’s changing Fiqh of citizenship in the light of the Islamic legal tradition

In the wake of the Arab Revolutions of 2011, countries in the Middle East are grappling with how Islamists might be included within a regime of democratic political pluralism and how their aspirations for an “Islamic state” could affect the citizenship status of non-Muslims. While Islamic jurisprudence on this issue has traditionally classified non-Muslims in Islamic society as protected peoples or dhimma, endowed with what the authors term “minority citizenship”, this article will examine how the transnational intellectual Wasaṭiyya or Centrist movement, of which Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi is the figurehead, have sought to develop a new fiqh of citizenship in which Muslims and non-Muslims have equal civil and political rights. This article will focus on Yusuf al-Qaradawi on the basis that his very recent shift in 2010 on the issue is yet to be studied in depth, as well as in view of the fact that the dilemma faced by reformist Islamic scholars—how to integrate modern concepts into a legal tradition while simultaneously arguing for that tradition’s continuing relevance and authority—is for him rendered particularly acute, given that this tradition is itself the very source of his own authority and relevance. It will therefore be argued that the legacy of the Islamic legal tradition structures his discourse in a very specific way, thereby having the potential to render it more persuasive to his audience, and worthy of a more detailed examination.

Biological legacies buffer local species extinction after logging.

Summary Clearcutting has been identified as a main threat to forest biodiversity. In the last few decades, alternatives to clearcutting have gained much interest. Living and dead trees are often retained after harvest to serve as structural legacies to mitigate negative effects of forestry. However, this practice is widely employed without information from systematic before–after control‐impact studies to assess the processes involved in species responses after clearcutting with retention.We performed a large‐scale survey of the occurrence of logging‐sensitive and red‐listed bryophytes and lichens before and after clearcutting with the retention approach. A methodology was adopted that, for the first time in studies on retention approaches, enabled monitoring of location‐specific substrates. We used uncut stands as controls to assess the variables affecting the survival of species after a major disturbance.In total, 12 bryophyte species and 27 lichen species were analysed. All were classified as sensitive to logging, and most species are also currently red‐listed. We found that living and dead trees retained after final harvest acted as refugia in which logging‐sensitive species were able to survive for 3 to 7 years after logging. Depending on type of retention and organism group, between 35% and 92% of the species occurrences persisted on retained structures. Most species observed outside retention trees or patches disappeared.Larger pre‐harvest population sizes of bryophytes on dead wood increased the survival probability of the species and hence buffered the negative effects of logging. Synthesis and applications. Careful spatial planning of retention structures is required to fully embrace the habitats of logging‐sensitive species. Bryophytes and lichens persisted to a higher degree in retention patches compared to solitary trees or in the clearcut area. Retaining groups of trees in logged areas will help to sustain populations of species over the clearcut phase. When possible, old logs should be moved into retention patches to provide a more beneficial environment for dead wood‐dependent species. Our study also highlights the need for more before–after control‐impact studies of retention forestry to explore factors influencing the survival of species after logging.

Looking Forward: Incremental Change or Transformation?

IN OUR INAUGURAL ESSAY, TIM SISK AND I DECLARED OUR INTENTION TO FOSter exploration of the ways in which social goods--like wealth, power, security, authority, food, water, and knowledge--are continuously distributed or maldistributed through cooperation and competition among influential actors--public, nonprofit, and private (including illicit associations)--within a constantly evolving normative framework, an increasingly stressed natural environment, and stunning technological change. Coincidentally, we hoped to illuminate the reasons why the extant system of governance so inadequately addresses the great threats to human flourishing from the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to climate change, slaughter of the helpless, and destitution. The question we asked ourselves was: What format would best serve our ends? Editors, like other human beings, are to a degree path dependent. We accepted our structural legacy, but tweaked it in part by increasing the number of special issues and sections and beginning the normalization of longer review essays. Perhaps we departed modestly from some of our predecessors by convening scholars and practitioners around issues and events that we deemed particularly salient in terms of our larger aims. An early example was the symposium that I organized on the controversial Goldstone Report. I had two immediate goals. One was to promote clarification through discourse of the constraints that human rights and humanitarian law impose on the parties to asymmetric conflicts whether occurring within a single territorial authority or across international boundaries. Another was to strengthen the precedent for relatively rapid scholarly assessment of important UN reports and thereby to sharpen fact-finding and analytical standards for UN inquiries. After all, an important element of effective global governance is a systemic capacity for fact-finding and assessment that will be widely perceived as authoritative. A second product of our efforts to organize collective inquiry was the special issue on the multilateral diplomacy of states moving rapidly higher in the league tables of geo-economic and geostrategic influence, specifically Brazil, Russia, India, and China (the BRIC countries) which we followed up with a similar piece on Turkey. Had time allowed, we would have commissioned additional pieces at a minimum on Indonesia and Nigeria or South Africa. Yet a third illustration of our attempt to convene scholars in order to address a critical governance issue are the two articles on the governance of transnational river systems that appeared in the previous issue. One of my disappointments as coeditor was my inability to find a scholar willing and able to lead an assessment of measures taken by nations with relatively effective governments to mitigate the impact of global market forces on sectors of the national population most vulnerable to rapid changes in comparative advantage. I saw it as an effort to identify best practices in helping not only the destitute, but also members of the middle and working classes who in middle age find themselves economically redundant. Probably for youth unemployment we would have needed a separate, albeit related, study of best practices. These days even relatively successful states have diminished fiscal resources for protecting the welfare of their citizens. …

Conservation in a Wicked Complex World; Challenges and Solutions

AbstractMost conservation challenges are complex and possess all the characteristics of so called “wicked” problems. Despite widespread recognition of this complexity conservationists possess a legacy of institutional structures, tools and practices better suited to simpler systems. We highlight two specific challenges posed by this mismatch: the difficulty of adaptive management where success is ambiguous and the tension between “best practice” and creativity. Drawing on research in other disciplines (including psychology, information systems, business management, and military strategy) we suggest practices that conservation could consider to better respond to complexity. These practices include, defining clear objectives, the use of scenarios, emphasis on pattern analysis, and ensuring greater scope for creative and decentralized decision making. To help illustrate these challenges and solutions, we point to parallels between conservation and military operations.

Teacher education budget cuts in Romania and the US: points of contrast and comparison

Background Budgets for teacher education programmes have been substantially reduced as a result of the global economic crisis. Purpose The purpose of this study was to compare the teacher education budget cutting processes and procedures for universities in Romania versus one university in the United States. Sample The data were collected from six Romanian universities that all have teacher education programmes. These universities represent the range of higher education quality in the country as indicated by their publication rates. Data from these universities were compared with those from the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR). UNR is the flagship university in the Nevada System of Higher Education, and Nevada has been harder hit by the recent global economic crisis than any other state in the United States and cuts to teacher education there have been substantial. Design and methods Data about the budget cutting processes and decisions in the teacher education programmes of six Romanian universities were collected through an electronic survey. These data were compared with the processes and decisions made at the UNR. Results The budget cutting processes in Romania were less transparent, and involved less input from stakeholders such as faculty and staff. Most decisions were made at a higher level of authority in Romania, and cuts in Romania were more likely to be across the board rather than more strategically targeted as they were in Nevada. Conclusions These differences are discussed in terms of the historical legacy of structures and policies in Romania, and the resistance to reform inherent in those structures and policies.

Schools with a Difference: Policy Discourses and Education Reform in Britain and Germany

This article seeks to explain why Britain reformed its early post-war policy of placing students in separate secondary schools on the basis of perceived ability while Germany has retained the practice. While recent accounts of skill formation have stressed the role of producer groups in shaping the development of education and training systems in advanced democracies, this article maintains that the variation observed in the cases is largely explained by the timing of changes in dominant policy discourses. In Britain, new ideas concerning human ability led policymakers to reconsider the appropriateness of differentiation in secondary education, leading to changes in the 1960s that created ‘comprehensive’ schools attended by most students. In West Germany, by contrast, cultural federalism and structural legacies from the Nazi era served to delay the acceptance of such ideas. This ideational ‘freeze’ would prove fatal for education reform in the FRG, as changing political, economic, and social conditions would contribute to the failure of initiatives proposed in the 1970s to modernise the school system.

Transformation and Continuities in Urban Struggles

Spain was one of the countries at the heart of the work of Manuel Castells due to its history of urban struggles and labour–urban based alliances. It formed one of the key examples of city movements and the democratisation of urban spaces. The 1960s and 1970s were seen to throw up a range of new types of urban mobilisation and engagement—in part based on issues of internal migration and its urban and employment impact. With the changes in Spain during the late 1970s and 1980s—which were economic, political and social—this dimension of urban politics steadily fell away, although Spain continued to exhibit unique organisational forms at the level of the local state and local civil society. Civic politics were linked to local associations in a curious way, but the extent of mobilisation had changed due to the steady institutionalisation of urban and labour movements (and a weakening of their relations). However, this civic dimension began to re-emerge with the strong wave of immigration after the mid 1990s when, from being a country with one of the lowest levels of first-generation immigrants, it has become the European country with one of the highest. The paper focuses on the way migrant organisations and trade unions have organised in relation to migrants in the labour market. It shows how the legacy of previous mobilisations and structures continues to provide a framework for the politics and inclusion of migrant communities. However, it also argues that much of the new urban politics of migration has been influenced by a service delivery—leading to a similar set of outcomes that faced the indigenous urban movements of the 1960s and 1970s. This is of theoretical significance to how we see network and urban politics in relation to unions and employment relations.

Singular and interactive effects of blowdown, salvage logging, and wildfire in sub-boreal pine systems

The role of disturbance in structuring vegetation is widely recognized; however, we are only beginning to understand the effects of multiple interacting disturbances on ecosystem recovery and development. Of particular interest is the impact of post-disturbance management interventions, particularly in light of the global controversy surrounding the effects of salvage logging on forest ecosystem recovery. Studies of salvage logging impacts have focused on the effects of post-disturbance salvage logging within the context of a single natural disturbance event. There have been no formal evaluations of how these effects may differ when followed in short sequence by a second, high severity natural disturbance. To evaluate the impact of this management practice within the context of multiple disturbances, we examined the structural and woody plant community responses of sub-boreal Pinus banksiana systems to a rapid sequence of disturbances. Specifically, we compared responses to Blowdown (B), Fire (F), Blowdown–Fire, and Blowdown–Salvage–Fire (BSF) and compared these to undisturbed control (C) stands. Comparisons between BF and BSF indicated that the primary effect of salvage logging was a decrease in the abundance of structural legacies, such as downed woody debris and snags. Both of these compound disturbance sequences (BF and BSF), resulted in similar woody plant communities, largely dominated by Populus tremuloides; however, there was greater homogeneity in community composition in salvage logged areas. Areas experiencing solely fire (F stands) were dominated by P. banksiana regeneration, and blowdown areas (B stands) were largely characterized by regeneration from shade tolerant conifer species. Our results suggest that salvage logging impacts on woody plant communities are diminished when followed by a second high severity disturbance; however, impacts on structural legacies persist. Provisions for the retention of snags, downed logs, and surviving trees as part of salvage logging operations will minimize these structural impacts and may allow for greater ecosystem recovery following these disturbance combinations.

La police nationale, le renforcement démocratique et la consolidation de la paix au Burundi

Current reforms to the Burundi National Police are part of the wider security system reforms rooted in the Arusha Accords signed by the main Burundian political actors in 2003. Those accords envisaged the professionalisation of a police force dedicated to maintaining public security. Despite many efforts and important advances, the police are still faced with enduring challenges such as gaps between new laws and police behaviour, weak operational capacities, the poor representation of women and manipulation by political parties. These challenges are related in part to the ambiguities of the post-conflict context, but they are also rooted in inherited structural and cultural legacies such as patrimonial politics. Résumé La plupart des projets menés au sein de la police nationale du Burundi s'inscrivent plus largement dans le processus de réforme des forces de sécurité décidé par les acteurs politiques burundais lors des négociations pour la paix d'Arusha. L'un des principaux changements préconisés par l'Accord d'Arusha dans cette nouvelle dynamique touche la professionnalisation des forces de sécurité. Malgré des efforts constants et des progrès importants, la police demeure toujours confrontée à de nombreux défis tels que les brèches entre les nouvelles normes et la conduite de certains policiers, les faibles capacités opérationnelles, une pauvre représentation des femmes et la manipulation politique. Ces défis sont en partie liés au contexte post-conflit ambigu, mais elles sont aussi ancrées dans des legs structurels et culturels, entre autres, le patrimonialisme.

Variable retention silviculture in Tasmania's wet forests: ecological rationale, adaptive management and synthesis of biodiversity benefits

Summary The recognition that biodiversity conservation requires more than a system of reserves has led to the need to consider the outcomes of land management actions, such as timber harvesting, in the matrix land outside reserves. The design of harvesting systems can be guided by the natural disturbance regime, which in Tasmania's lowland wet eucalypt forests is infrequent, intense wildfire. Clearfell, burn and sow silviculture has been used since the 1960s for harvesting these forests but, while this system is practical and effectively regenerates eucalypts in harvested coupes, it is predicted to lead to losses at the coupe level of late-successional species and structures that would survive into stands regenerating following natural wildfire. Variable retention silviculture is thus currently being implemented as an alternative to clearfelling in wet old-growth forest on public land (state forest) in Tasmania. In contrast to clearfelling, variable retention has the explicit ecological goal of maintaining some species, habitats and structural legacies from the pre-harvest forest into the harvested and regenerating stand. This paper synthesises biodiversity findings from the Warra Silvicultural Systems Trial (SST), established in 1997, and demonstrates that aggregated retention is the optimal form of variable retention for ensuring coupe-scale persistence (‘lifeboating’) of mature-forest biodiversity. In addition to providing retained forest, aggregates are also designed to facilitate recolonisation of harvested areas by mature-forest species (‘forest influence’), and to provide connectivity across the forest stand. In the last few years, more than 50 aggregated-retention coupes have been harvested in mature forest across Tasmania. Development and implementation of variable retention in Tasmania is an example of active adaptive management, which we describe in relation to five steps for a formalised adaptive management program, indicating how ecological criteria are incorporated in operational guidelines for implementation of aggregated retention.

Celebrating the Chagras: Mestizaje, Multiculturalism, and the Ecuadorian Nation

Abstr ACt This article focuses on controversial formulations of hybrid racialized identity in multicultural Ecuador as an example of the ambiguity and contradiction of racial formations in contemporary postcolonial societies. Ecuador has had to come to terms with a legacy of colonial hierarchies and power structures shaped around racialized and engendered social formations. In the Latin American region, the impact of hybrid social constructions, mestizaje, dates back to the seventeenth century, informing the way Spanish colonizers organized colonial society in a caste system built around degrees of “whiteness,” yet for most of the twentieth century, mestizaje came to function as an ideological construct of cultural homogeneity and unity that informed formulations of national identity. However, the impacts of global discourses of recognition of ethnic and cultural diversity and rights ever since the 1980s have led to significant shifts in the dis course of and on national identity. Since the early 1990s, many constitutional reforms across the region moved away from the idea of a culturally homogeneous national identity by celebrating ethnic and cultural diversity. This article analyzes the impacts of these transna tional and global processes on the formation of Ecuadorian national identity. By examining the discourses and social practices involving the chagra, the mestizo peasant of Ecuadorian highlands, I explore the extent to which mestizaje as a modern ideological construct still informs the formation of social hierarchies, maintaining not only Indians and Blacks but also “poor mestizos” in a liminal state of yet-tobecome citizens of the nation. However, I also argue that the recognition of diversity under multiculturalism has not overcome long-standing prejudices, racism, and subordination.