Recognition Of Peoples Research Articles

Explaining the Politics of Recognition of Ethnic Diversity and Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in Oaxaca, Mexico

A ‘politics of recognition’– a process of political reform intended to recognise formally cultural diversity and indigenous peoples’ rights – has developed in Mexico, both at the federal and at the state levels, since the early 1990s. The case of the state of Oaxaca stands out in this respect – the local constitution and nearly a dozen secondary laws were reformed during the 1990s, resulting in the conformation of the most comprehensive multicultural framework in Mexico. In this article, I attempt to explain the emergence and the particular development of Oaxaca's unique politics of recognition. Following an explanatory framework proposed by Donna Lee Van Cott, I conclude that the recognition agenda emerged in Oaxaca as legitimacy and governability was put under strain. In addition, I conclude that the (by Mexican standards) rapid and broad fashion in which it developed can be explained on the bases of the severity of the threats to governability and of the capacity of indigenous actors to influence the decision‐making process and form alliances with key political actors – i.e. the state governors.

Affaires frontalières : transformations socio-économiques à Ratanakiri (Cambodge du nord-est)

In Ratanakiri, a remote northeastern province of Cambodia, rapid involvement in recent regional Southeast Asian economic developments results in changes in economic and social structures, and broad development processes and local livelihoods have become intertwined. Population growth, lowland Khmer immigration, commercial plantations, and logging increase pressure on land, with changes in land use showing in the landscape. Increasing numbers of highlanders practicing swidden farming and collecting non-timber forest products will soon have to altogether abandon traditional patterns and seek alternative sources of livelihood. This strongly argues for better land distribution and land-use planning, including recognition of indigenous peoples’ traditional land-use patterns and rights, lest they be forcibly displaced or marginalized within their own territories.

Writing Indian nations: native intellectuals and the politics of historiography, 1827-1863

In the early years of the republic, the United States government negotiated with Indian nations because it could not afford protracted wars politically, militarily, or economically. Maureen Konkle argues that by depending on treaties, which rest on the equal standing of all signatories, Europeans in North America institutionalized a paradox: the very documents through which they sought to dispossess Native peoples in fact conceded Native autonomy. As the United States used coerced treaties to remove Native peoples from their lands, a group of Cherokee, Pequot, Ojibwe, Tuscarora, and Seneca writers spoke out. With history, polemic, and personal narrative these writers countered widespread misrepresentations about Native peoples' supposedly primitive nature, their inherent inability to form governments, and their impending disappearance. Furthermore, they contended that arguments about racial difference merely justified oppression and dispossession; deriding these arguments as willful attempts to evade the true meanings and implications of the treaties, the writers insisted on recognition of Native peoples' political autonomy and human equality. Konkle demonstrates that these struggles over the meaning of U.S.-Native treaties in the early nineteenth century led to the emergence of the first substantial body of Native writing in English and, as she shows, the effects of the struggle over the political status of Native peoples remain embedded in contemporary scholarship. |Konkle demonstrates that struggles over the meaning of U.S.-Native treaties in the early nineteenth century led to the emergence of the first substantial body of Native writing in English. These writers countered widespread misrepresentations about Native peoples' supposedly primitive nature, their inherent inability to form governments, and their impending disappearance with history, polemic, and personal narrative.

Facilities management: a behavioural approach

Seeks out whether technical performance indicators may be challenged by perception data thereby forcing a paradigm shift in building assessment. Reports the development of a conceptual framework and thereby justification of methodological approaches for a currently undertaken research project. Employs a subjective approach, based on inhabitants’ perceptions of their own environments. Concludes the measure of productivity used herein may be questionable but the use of productivity as the performance variable (against cost) is recognition of peoples’ importance as occupiers and their views equally so.

"Land, Water, and Truth": San Identity and Global Indigenism

San peoples of southern Africa followed two very different trajectories through the 20th century. For some groups, colonial rule and apartheid meant segregation on geographically remote homelands (or in game parks); for the majority of San, however, they meant incorporation as a landless underclass of farm laborers, domestic servants, and squatters. This bifurcated history now presents obstacles to the recognition of a nascent pan–San identity as the contemporary San join other indigenous peoples in struggles over land rights, control over natural resources, and political voice in national and international arenas. This article discusses some of the ways in which international models of indigenism have colluded with essentialist conceptions of culture and ethnicity to (1) prevent the recognition of the San peoples' cultural identity, as it is shaped by their various historical experiences and socioeconomic conditions, and (2) distort the understanding of San claims for land and natural resources by transforming San struggles for social and economic justice into demands for "cultural preservation." [Keywords: indigenous peoples, San, southern Africa, social movements, cultural politics]

Maya medicine in the biological gaze: bioprospecting research as herbal fetishism.

The relationship of human societies to territory and natural resources is being drastically altered by a series of global agreements concerning trade, intellectual property, and the conservation and use of genetic resources. Through a characteristic style of collective appropriation of their tropical ecosystems, Maya societies have created local institutions for governing access to their common resources. However, new mechanisms of global governance require access to Maya biodiversity for world commercial interests. The Chiapas Highland Maya already face this prospect in the International Cooperative Biodiversity Group drug discovery project, which proposes to use Maya medical knowledge to screen plants for potential pharmaceuticals. The ethnobiological focus of the project emphasizes the naturalistic aspects of Maya medicine, primarily the use of herbal remedies. This biological gaze decontextualizes the situated knowledge of Maya healers, ignoring the cultural context in which they create and apply that knowledge. The search for raw materials for the production of universal medical technology results in symbolic violence to the cultural logic of Maya peoples. Only the full recognition of Maya peoples' collective rights to territory and respect for their local common-resource institutions will provide ultimate protection for their cultural and natural patrimony.

Indigenous Peoples and Conservation

Forest-dwelling peoples' organizations continue to express concern about destruction of their forests. The International Alliance of the Indigenous-Tribal Peoples of the Tropical Forests issued The Forest Peoples Charter in February 1992 (available from the World Rainforest Movement in the U.K and Cultural Survival in the U.S.A.). The Charter sets out a conservation policy based on recognition of indigenous peoples' rights to conserve their forests and to regulate development activities currently imposed upon them without their consent. It is the first such statement from a global network of forestdwelling peoples' organizations. At the local level, forest-dwellers around the world have repeatedly made declarations deploring outsiders' destruction of forests for at least 500 years. The Forest Peoples Charter adds its weight to other international forest-dwellers' declarations, including the 1988 statement of the Coordinating Body for the Indigenous Peoples' Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA) highlighted in the essay by Redford and Stearman (1993). Many conservation groups are now supporting forest peoples' struggles for recognition of their rights. The Global Biodiversity Strategy (World Resources Institute et al. 1992) supports recognition of ancestral domains. Redford and Stearman also conclude that it is wise for conservationists to work with indigenous peoples. But like Clad (1984), they argue that the interests and agendas of the two groups are partially or completely in conflict. Conservation is a social and political process. Conservationists interested in achieving on-the-ground conservation of biodiversity have to choose among real options, not idealized academic options. Conservationists in an increasing number of countries are choosing the option of working with local peoples' organizations. Redford and Stearman are correct in stating that compromises are being made, but decisions about goals and compromises deserve further thought.