Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality.
Log in
Accepted Paper:
Making visible indigenous youth visions in the critical context of El Alto, Bolivia
Philipp Horn
(University of Sheffield)
Olivia Casagrande
(University of Sheffield)
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses indigenous youth visions for just and sustainable cities. We will share scenes from a documentary film co-produced with young Aymara women from El Alto, whose visual testimonies, re-enactment and imaginations speak to debates around indigenous alternatives to development.
Paper long abstract:
Focusing on Bolivia, this intervention discusses indigenous youth visions and implications for just and sustainable cities. Bolivia is renown internationally for promoting indigenous rights, post-neoliberal development and decolonisation in its 2009 constitution. Research to date, however, highlights gaps between legal rhetoric and practice, emphasising how Bolivia's government continues with extractivist development as usual and reproduces colonial imaginaries, for example by considering cities - albeit being home to a predominantly young population who self-identify as indigenous - to be non-indigenous spaces. In addition to being denied from indigenous rights and experiencing ethno-racial discrimination, urban indigenous youths currently confront a domestic crisis exacerbated by the global pandemic. They often lack socio-economic opportunities despite high levels of education. Young indigenous women are also disproportionately affected by intra-familial violence and sexual harassment.
Yet, our collaborative research, conducted over the last year in the cities of El Alto, Rurrenabaque, Sucre and Santa Cruz, highlights that urban indigenous youths have not lost hope. In this intervention, we particularly draw on a collaboration with four young Aymara women from El Alto with whom we deployed participatory video-making as a tool to articulate and enact youth problems and visions. We will share film scenes to make visible their extraordinary multi-local and multi-active lives, their efforts to combine modern urban culture with Aymara language and tradition, and their dreams for anti-racist and eco-friendly forms of urban co-habitation. In a brief follow-up talk, we will position these visual testimonies within debates around indigenous and decolonial alternatives to development.
Click the star to add/remove an item to/from your individual schedule.
You need to be logged in to avail of this functionality. Log in
Accepted Paper:
Paper short abstract:
Paper long abstract:
Focusing on Bolivia, this intervention discusses indigenous youth visions and implications for just and sustainable cities. Bolivia is renown internationally for promoting indigenous rights, post-neoliberal development and decolonisation in its 2009 constitution. Research to date, however, highlights gaps between legal rhetoric and practice, emphasising how Bolivia's government continues with extractivist development as usual and reproduces colonial imaginaries, for example by considering cities - albeit being home to a predominantly young population who self-identify as indigenous - to be non-indigenous spaces. In addition to being denied from indigenous rights and experiencing ethno-racial discrimination, urban indigenous youths currently confront a domestic crisis exacerbated by the global pandemic. They often lack socio-economic opportunities despite high levels of education. Young indigenous women are also disproportionately affected by intra-familial violence and sexual harassment.
Yet, our collaborative research, conducted over the last year in the cities of El Alto, Rurrenabaque, Sucre and Santa Cruz, highlights that urban indigenous youths have not lost hope. In this intervention, we particularly draw on a collaboration with four young Aymara women from El Alto with whom we deployed participatory video-making as a tool to articulate and enact youth problems and visions. We will share film scenes to make visible their extraordinary multi-local and multi-active lives, their efforts to combine modern urban culture with Aymara language and tradition, and their dreams for anti-racist and eco-friendly forms of urban co-habitation. In a brief follow-up talk, we will position these visual testimonies within debates around indigenous and decolonial alternatives to development.
Alternatives to urban development: Youths between multiple crisis and future visions
Session 1 Wednesday 6 July, 2022, -