Regional Renegotiations of Space

Mattiace, Shannan

doi:10.1177/0094582x0102800205

Cited by 11 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…These developments have turned what used to be a peasant community into a locality with not a few professionals, migrant workers, and even politicians who have attained offices at municipal, state, and national levels. 18 Because much research in the region has centered on political discourses of leaders or spokespersons of prominent organizations (Mattiace 1998(Mattiace , 2001(Mattiace , 2002Stephen 2002), I focus mainly on the interpretations of those members of the local population who lack a prominent public position.…”

Section: Interpretationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Politics and Memories in Rural Chiapas: Languages of Power at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century

Escalona Victoria

2008

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The configuration of politics consists in unfinished and negotiated processes. This appears clearly in regions where the advent of governmental institutions has occurred under a weaker centralised surveillance. Among the Tojolabal population in Chiapas, Mexico, state institutions like the ejido and rural schooling have had an important presence. However, the "integration" of this population into national society was different from that characterising other areas and has opened up a vast field of dispute between diverse organizations. In addition, this population reproduces a particular understanding of a social world rooted in its dependency on cultivation of the milpa. This understanding is expressed in ritual practices (as ways of coping with uncertainty in seasonal corn cultivation) and special narratives (about harm, disease, death, hunger, and rain, and about witches and entities like the lord of the underworld). Ritual and narrative are analyzed as foundations of an idiom for recalling social tensions and allowing for the articulation of explanations and memories of broader social events (such as Nation-State formation). Rather than a coherent worldview, symbolic system, or structure of values, what we find here is a varied and ambiguous language of power, an idiom to talk about power differences and their contradictions. Such language generates not a closed social theory but an open, flexible field of expression that is reproduced because the world is experienced, both in the finca and in the ejido, as a hierarchical yet changing and contested space, filled with constant dangers and struggles, characterized by scarcity and need.

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Section: Interpretationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Politics and Memories in Rural Chiapas: Languages of Power at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century

Escalona Victoria

2008

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“…(1998: 196) For people like del Val, it is at best premature to talk about autonomy when there is no material means to self-determination. Many indigenous leaders of autonomy movements themselves have noted that legislating autonomy is one thing, putting it into practice on the ground quite another (Mattiace, 1997(Mattiace, , 2003.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Topology of Autonomy

Smith

2004

Critique of Anthropology

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Policy debates are still too polarized between those who expect too much of ‘indigenous autonomy’ and those who expect too little. This article examines the local meaning of, and proposals toward, self-determination in a Totonac coffee-growing population in the Sierra Norte de Puebla, Mexico. The article argues for the complexity and context-dependency of ‘autonomy’. Several factors shape visions of autonomy/self-determination in the Sierra. First, the Zapatistas in Chiapas have inspired Totonac organizations toward antiglobalization discourses and new approaches to relations among culture, cosmology and agriculture. But, second, the inertia built up over three decades of state-assisted coffee production keeps development thinking trained on a major, if crisis-ridden, global market. Third, resource deterioration renders doubtful any full conversion to the ‘traditional’ subsistence farming called for by some Totonac rights organizations. Autonomy initiatives emerging in the Sierra are uneasy combinations of ethnic-purist, market-led and state-sponsored development models. The article suggests that in regions marked by global markets, state intervention and serious environmental constraints, ‘selfdetermination’ is about local design and control of heterogeneous, worldworthy economies.

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“…On trouve une explication intéressante de ce conflit par Shannan L. Mattiace (2001). Selon l'auteur, la petite communauté de Santa Marta dans le municipio de Chenalhó -où ont été recrutés les paramilitairesaurait été négligée autant par l'ezln que par le gouvernement du Chiapas dans leurs efforts pour aménager de nouveaux municipios.…”

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La rébellion des sans-visage

Cormier

2004

socsoc

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Résumé L’auteur analyse le mouvement zapatiste au Chiapas afin de connaître les ajustements cognitifs au cours du cycle de mobilisation qui a précédé le soulèvement du 1er janvier 1994. D’abord, il souligne le rôle de facteurs classiques mis en évidence par la perspective de la mobilisation des ressources : la structure d’occasions politiques et l’organisation. Ces facteurs ont contribué au développement d’une structure de mobilisation bien spécifique dans la Selva, une région reconnue pour être le bastion des zapatistes. Enfin, l’analyse de témoignages d’Indiens zapatistes révèle la présence de deux processus sociopsychologiques au sein du mouvement, et ce avant la rébellion : la revalorisation du soi collectif et l’amplification des stéréotypes à l’égard des ladinos (non-Indiens). L’Église catholique a contribué à revaloriser le soi collectif. L’amplification des stéréotypes est attribuée à l’influence des guérilleros des Fuerzas de Liberación Nacional (fln) et, indirectement, à celle de l’autoritarisme de l’État.

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Regional Renegotiations of Space

Cited by 11 publications

References 2 publications

Politics and Memories in Rural Chiapas: Languages of Power at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century

Politics and Memories in Rural Chiapas: Languages of Power at the Dawn of the Twenty-First Century

The Topology of Autonomy

La rébellion des sans-visage

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